The Concubine's Tattoo Page 5

  At the doctor’s orders, Mura fetched six small, empty wooden cages, and a larger one containing six live mice. Dr. Ito lined the cages up on the table. In the first two small ones, he lit a lamp and incense burner from Lady Harume’s room, placed a wriggling gray mouse into each cage, and covered them with cloths.

  “This method should expose the mice to any poison in the oil or incense,” Dr. Ito said, “while protecting us from dangerous fumes.”

  In the third cage he set a dish of the sake that Harume had apparently imbibed shortly before her death, and a third mouse. To test the razor, Dr. Ito shaved a patch of hair off a fourth mouse’s back; with the pearl-handled knife he made a shallow cut on the fifth mouse’s belly, then dropped the animals into separate cages.

  “And now the ink.” From a cabinet Dr. Ito took one of his own knives. “I’ll use a clean blade to avoid introducing extraneous contamination.” He made a scratch on the sixth mouse’s belly, unstoppered the lacquer jar, and brushed black ink onto the wound. Then he dropped the mouse into its cage and said, “Now we wait.”

  Sano and Dr. Ito watched the cages. Faint scratchings came from within the two cloth-covered ones. The third mouse sniffed the liquor, then began to drink. The razor-shaved mouse roamed his cage while the others licked their wounds. Suddenly a high shriek rang out.

  “Look!” Sano pointed.

  The mouse with ink on its cut belly writhed, back arching, tiny claws grasping the air, tail whipping back and forth. Its chest heaved as if trying desperately to suck air into the lungs; its eyes rolled. The little pink mouth opened and closed, emitting cries of agony, then a gush of blood. Sano indicated the symptoms which matched the castle physician’s description of those suffered by Lady Harume: “Convulsions. Vomiting. Shortness of breath.”

  A few more squeals and gasps, a final paroxysm, then the mouse lay dead. Sano and Dr. Ito bowed their heads in respect for the animal that had given its life to the pursuit of scientific knowledge. Then they checked the other cages.

  “This mouse is intoxicated,” Dr. Ito said, observing the creature that staggered around the now-empty sake dish, “but otherwise healthy.” The shaved animal and the knife-cut one scampered about their cages. “No apparent ill effects here, either.” Dr. Ito lifted the cloths off the last two cages, releasing clouds of pungent smoke and revealing two groggy but living mice. “Or here. The ink alone contained poison.”

  “Could this have been suicide?” Sano asked, still hoping for an easy resolution to Lady Harume’s death.

  “Possibly, but I think not. Even if she had wanted to die, why choose such a painful method, instead of hanging or drowning herself? Those are the more common means of female suicide. And why bother putting the poison in the ink, instead of simply swallowing it?”

  “So Lady Harume was murdered.” Dismay tempered Sano’s gratification at having his suspicions confirmed. He must report the news to the shogun, the chief castle physician, and palace officials; it would then spread throughout Edo. To prevent destructive consequences, Sano must identify the poisoner, fast. “What substance kills so quickly and horribly?”

  “When I was physician to the Imperial Court in Kyoto, I made a study of poisons,” Dr. Ito said. “The symptoms caused by this one match those of bish, an extract of a plant native to the Himalayan region. Bish has been used in India and China for almost two thousand years as an arrow toxin, both for hunting and in warfare. As you can see, a small amount introduced into the blood is fatal. People have also died after mistaking the plant’s roots for horseradish. But the plant is extremely rare in Japan. I’ve never heard of any such poisoning cases here.”

  “Where could the poison that killed Lady Harume have come from?” Sano asked. “Am I looking for a murderer with special knowledge of herbs? Such as a sorcerer, priest, or doctor?”

  “Perhaps. But there are druggists who illegally sell poisons to any customer able to pay.” Dr. Ito told Mura to remove the mice. Then his expression turned thoughtful. “These merchants usually offer common poisons such as arsenic, which can be mixed with sugar and dusted onto cakes, or antimony, which is administered in tea or wine. Or fugu, the poisonous blowfish.

  “But there was one man who became a legend among physicians and scientists: an itinerant peddler who traveled around Japan, collecting remedies from remote areas and in port cities where the locals possess medical knowledge gleaned from foreigners before Japan was closed to free international trade. His name was Choyei, and I used to buy medicine from him when he passed through Kyoto. He knew more about drugs than anyone I’ve ever met. Mostly he dealt in beneficial substances, though he also sold poisons to scientists who, like myself, desired to study them. And there were rumors that his merchandise had caused the deaths of several high bakufu officials.”

  “Could he be in Edo now?” Sano asked. If the poison dealer named a recent purchaser of bish, Lady Harume’s murder could be solved.

  “I haven’t seen Choyei—or heard anything of him—in years. He must be about my age now, if he’s still alive. An odd, reclusive individual who wandered wherever fancy took him, according to no particular schedule, disguised as a tramp. I heard he was a fugitive from the law.”

  Though discouraged by this story, Sano didn’t lose hope. “If Choyei is here, I’ll find him. And there’s another possible route to the killer.” Sano held up the ink jar. “I’ll try to discover where Lady Harume got this, and who could have put poison into it.”

  “Perhaps the lover for whom she tattooed herself?” Dr. Ito suggested. “Unfortunately, Lady Harume didn’t cut his name on her flesh, as courtesans often do, but she would have wished to obscure his identity, if he was someone other than the shogun.”

  “Because a concubine could be dismissed, or even executed for infidelity to her lord,” Sano agreed. “And the place she chose for the tattoo suggests that she wanted secrecy.” He rewrapped the evidence. “I plan to interview the shogun’s mother and her chief lady palace official. Maybe they can provide information about people who might have wanted Lady Harume dead.”

  Dr. Ito accompanied Sano outside to the courtyard, now shaded by the coming twilight. “Thank you for your help, Ito-san, and for the gift,” Sano said. “When Lady Harume’s corpse arrives, I’ll return for the examination.”

  After loading the evidence into his saddlebag, Sano mounted his horse, eager to continue the investigation, yet reluctant to return to Edo Castle. Would he find the killer before fear heightened the dangerous personal and political tensions there? Could he avoid becoming a casually of the inevitable plots and schemes?

  5

  Autumn twilight descended upon Edo. Clouds sketched swirls across a pale gold western sky, like script written in smoke. Lanterns burned above gates and in the windows of peasant houses, merchant dwellings, and great daimyo mansions, the Edo residences of landowning lords. A gibbous moon rose amid early stars, distant beacons heralding night and guiding a hunting party that tramped through the Edo Castle forest preserve. Porters laden with chests of supplies followed servants leading horses and barking dogs. Ahead, the hunters, armed with bows, moved on foot among the trees, above which birds soared in prenocturnal flight.

  “Honorable Chamberlain Yanagisawa, is it not getting a bit late for hunting?” Senior Elder Makino Narisada hurried to catch up with his superior. The other four members of Japan’s Council of Elders followed, huffing and gasping. “There is a most unpleasant chill in the air. And soon it will be too dark to see anything. Should we not go back to the palace and continue our meeting in comfort?”

  “Nonsense,” Yanagisawa retorted, drawing his bow and sighting along the arrow. “Night is the best time to hunt. Though I cannot see my prey clearly, neither can he see me. It’s much more of a challenge than hunting in the un-subtle light of day.”

  Tall, slender, strong—and, at age thirty-three, at least fifteen years younger than any of his comrades—Chamberlain Yanagisawa moved swiftly through the woods. Night’s mystical energy always
stimulated his senses. Vision and hearing gained power and clarity until he could detect the slightest motion. In the forest’s pine-scented shadows, he heard wings flap softly as a bird landed on a nearby bough. He froze, then took aim.

  Hunting aroused Yanagisawa’s killing instinct. What better condition in which to conduct affairs of state? He let fly the arrow. With a thump, it struck a tree. The bird flew off unharmed. Squawks arose as a nearby flock took wing in panic.

  “A marvelous shot,” Senior Elder Makino said anyway. The other elders echoed his praise.

  Chamberlain Yanagisawa smiled, not caring that he’d missed his target. He was after larger, more important prey. “Now, what is the next subject on our agenda?”

  “The Sōsakan-sama’s report on his successful murder investigation and capture of a smuggling ring in Nagasaki.”

  “Ah. Yes.” Fury filled Yanagisawa like a geyser of corrosive fluid, tapping the deeper anger that had burgeoned in Mm ever since Sano Ichiro had come to Edo Castle. Sano was a rival he’d failed to eliminate, a man who stood between him and his heart’s desire.

  “His Excellency was very impressed with the Sōsakan-sama’s victory,” Makino said, a hint of sly satisfaction coloring his obsequious manner. “What do you think, Honorable Chamberlain?”

  With emphatic, deliberate movements, Yanagisawa took another arrow from his quiver and kept walking. “Something must be done about Sano Ichiro,” he said.

  Since his youth, Yanagisawa had been the shogun’s lover, using his influence over Tokugawa Tsunayoshi to gain the exalted position of second-in-command, actual ruler of Japan. Yanagisawa’s administrative skills kept the government functioning while the shogun indulged a passion for the arts, religion, and young boys. Through the years, Yanagisawa had amassed great riches by skimming money from tributes paid to the Tokugawa by daimyo clans and taxes collected from merchants, and by charging fees for access to the shogun. Everyone bowed to Yanagisawa’s authority. Yet all this wealth and power wasn’t enough. Recently he had formulated a plan for becoming a daimyo, the official governor of an entire province. Four months ago he’d banished Sōsakan Sano to Nagasaki, thinking he’d seen the last of his enemy, believing that he’d permanently secured his position as the shogun’s favorite.

  However, his plan had backfired. Sano had survived exile—as he had Yanagisawa’s past attempts to discredit him—and returned a hero. Today he’d married the daughter of Magistrate Ueda, who also had more influence with the shogun than Yanagisawa liked. Tokugawa Tsunayoshi, peeved at him for sending Sano away, had so far refused Yanagisawa’s bid to enlarge his domain. Sano’s status at court had risen. So had that of another rival, whose influence Chamberlain Yanagisawa had easily counteracted in the past. And now, with the shogun finally aware of the animosity between his advisers, Yanagisawa dared not use against Sano the method he’d employed to dispose of past enemies: assassination. The risk of exposure and subsequent punishment was too great. Still, he must somehow destroy his competition.

  “Honorable Chamberlain, if the Sōsakan-sama protects Japan from corruption and treason, isn’t this a good thing?” said Hamada Kazuo, an increasingly enthusiastic partisan of Sano. “Should we not support his efforts?”

  Murmurs of timid agreement came from all the elders except Makino, Yanagisawa’s chief crony. Panic flared in Chamberlain Yanagisawa. The elders had once accepted his pronouncements without any objection. Now, because of Sano, he was losing control over the men who advised the shogun and set government policy. But he wouldn’t let it happen. No one must impede his rise to power.

  “How dare you contradict me?” he demanded. Speeding his pace, he forced the elders to walk faster as they offered hasty apologies. “Hurry up!”

  Oh, how he savored their obedience, a reminder of his authority—and how he dreaded its slightest weakening, which threatened to plunge him into the nightmare of his past…

  His father had been chamberlain to Lord Takei, daimyo of Arima Province, and his mother the daughter of a merchant family that had sought advancement through union with a samurai clan. Both parents had viewed children as tools to improve the family’s rank. Money and attention were lavished upon their upbringing, but only as means to an end: a position in the shogun’s court.

  In Yanagisawa’s clearest early memory, he and his brother Yoshihiro knelt in his father’s gloomy audience chamber. He was six, Yoshihiro twelve. Rain pattered on the tile roof; it seemed that the sun never shone in those days. Upon the dais sat their father, a grim, towering figure dressed in black.

  “Yoshihiro, your tutor reports that you are failing all your academic subjects.” Contempt laced their father’s voice. To Yanagisawa he said, “And the martial arts master tells me that you lost in a practice sword match yesterday.”

  He didn’t mention the fact that Yanagisawa could read and write as well as boys twice his age, or that Yoshihiro was the best young swordsman in town. “How do you expect to bring honor to the family this way?” His face purpled with anger. “You’re both worthless fools, unfit to be my sons!”

  Grabbing the wooden pole that always lay upon the dais, he battered the boys’ bodies. Yanagisawa and Yoshihiro cringed under the painful beating, fighting tears which would further enrage their father. In an adjacent chamber their mother punished their sister, Kiyoko, for her failure to excel at the accomplishments she must master before they could marry her off to a high-ranking official: “Stupid, disobedient girl!”

  The sound of slaps, blows, and Kiyoko’s weeping echoed constantly through that house. No matter what the children achieved, it was never enough to please their elders. Still, the punishment might have been bearable if they’d found consolation in the company of people outside the family, or in one another’s love. However, their parents had made this impossible.

  “Those brats are beneath you,” Yanagisawa’s mother would say, isolating him and his siblings from the young offspring of Lord Takei’s other retainers. “One day you’ll be their superiors.”

  The children learned that they could avoid punishment by passing the blame for misbehavior. Therefore, they hated and distrusted one another.

  Through all those terrible years, Yanagisawa remembered crying only once, on the cold, rainy day of his brother Yoshihiro’s funeral. At age seventeen, Yoshihiro had committed seppuku. While priests chanted, Yanagisawa and Kiyoko wept bitterly, the only people in the crowd of mourners to show emotion.

  “Stop that!” whispered their parents, administering slaps. “Such a pathetic display of weakness. What will people think? Why can’t you bring honor to the family, like Yoshihiro did?”

  But Yanagisawa and Kiyoko knew that their brother’s ritual suicide wasn’t a gesture of honor. Yoshihiro, the eldest son, had succumbed to the pressure of being the chief repository of the family’s ambitions. Always falling short of his parents’ expectations, he’d killed himself to avoid further anguish. Yanagisawa and Kiyoko wept not for him but for themselves, because their parents had traded their lives for a higher place in society.

  Kiyoko, fifteen and married to a wealthy official, had lost a child during one of her husband’s beatings, and was pregnant again. And Yanagisawa, eleven, had served three years as Lord Takei’s page and sexual object. His anus bled from the daimyo’s assaults; his pride had suffered even worse mortifications.

  Then, as the smoke from the funeral pyre drifted over the cremation ground, a change took place inside Yanagisawa. The weeping drained a reservoir of accumulated misery from his heart until there was nothing left except a bitter core of resolve. Yoshihiro had died because he was weak. Kiyoko was a helpless girl. But Yanagisawa vowed that someday he would be the most powerful man in the country. Then no one could ever use, punish, or humiliate him again. He would exact revenge upon everyone who had ever hurt him. Everyone would do his bidding; everyone would fear his anger.

  Eleven years later, Tokugawa Tsunayoshi heard reports of a young man whose looks and intelligence had facilitated his rapid advanc
ement through the ranks of Lord Takei’s retainers. Tsunayoshi, enamored of beautiful males, summoned Yanagisawa to Edo Castle. Yanagisawa had grown to splendid maturity; he was arrestingly handsome, with intense dark eyes. When the palace guards escorted Yanagisawa into Tsunayoshi’s private chamber, the twenty-nine-year-old future shogun dropped the book he was reading and stared.

  “Magnificent,” he said. Wonder dawned on his soft, effeminate features. To the guards, he said, “Leave us.”

  By this time, Yanagisawa knew his own limitations and assets. The relatively low status of his clan impeded his entry into the bakufu’s upper ranks, as did lack of wealth, but he’d learned how to use the talents given him by the gods of fortune. Now, gazing into Tokugawa Tsunayoshi’s eyes, he saw lust, weakness of mind and spirit, and a craving for approval. Inwardly Yanagisawa smiled. He bowed without bothering to kneel first, taking the first of many liberties with the future shogun. Tokugawa Tsunayoshi, humble in his awe, bowed back. Yanagisawa walked to the dais and picked up the older man’s book.

  “What are you reading, Your Excellency?” he asked.

  “The, ahh, ahh—” Stammering with excitement, Tokugawa Tsunayoshi trembled beside Yanagisawa. “The Dream of the Red Chamber.”

  Boldly Yanagisawa sat on the dais and read from the classic, erotic Chinese novel. His reading, perfected by childhood study and punishment, was flawless. He paused between passages, smiling provocatively into Tsunayoshi’s eyes. Tsunayoshi blushed. Yanagisawa held out his hand. Eagerly the future shogun grasped it.

  There was a knock at the door, and an official entered. “Your Excellency, it’s time for your meeting with the Council of Elders. They’re to brief you on the state of the nation and solicit your opinion on new government policies.”