The Cloud Pavilion si-14 Read online

  "When he came last night to fetch Chiyo, he found out what had happened to her," Yasuko explained. "He no longer wants her as his wife. He means to get a divorce."

  "How terrible," Reiko said as the woman escorted her through the mansion's dim, dank corridors.

  Her husband could divorce Chiyo by simply picking up a brush and inking three and a half straight lines on a piece of paper. And that was a mild punishment. He could have sent her to work in a brothel if he so chose.

  "What is worse, her husband has kept their children, and he won't even let her see them," Yasuko said. "She is very upset."

  She slid open a door, called inside, "Lady Reiko is here," and stood aside for Reiko to enter.

  Chiyo was sitting up in bed, propped by pillows. A quilt covered her from bosom to toes, even though the room was warm and stuffy. Her lank hair spilled from the bandage that swathed her head. Her features were so swollen from crying that Reiko couldn't tell what she looked like under normal circumstances. Chiyo's mouth quivered and her chest heaved with sobs.

  Reiko knew that state of profound grief that possesses mind and body like an uncontrollable force. She'd experienced it once in Miyako, when she'd thought Sano had been killed, and again when she'd gone north to rescue Masahiro and found evidence that he was dead. Now Reiko faced a woman who'd lost her husband and children even though they were still alive. She forgot that she'd once been ready to dislike Sano's relatives because they cared more for social customs than for their blood kin. Her heart went out to Chiyo.

  She knelt beside Chiyo, bowed, and said, "I am so sorry about what happened." She felt inadequate, unable to think of anything else to say but, "Please accept my sympathy."

  "Many thanks." Chiyo's voice broke on a sob. "You're very kind."

  Her mother offered Reiko refreshments. Reiko politely refused, was pressed, then accepted. The social routine gave Chiyo time to compose herself. Yasuko went off to see about the food. Reiko sensed that she didn't want to listen while Reiko questioned Chiyo and hear disturbing answers.

  "Honorable Lady Reiko, I appreciate your coming to talk to me," Chiyo said humbly.

  "There's no need to call me by my title," Reiko said. "My name will do."

  "Very well, Reiko-san. A thousand apologies for causing you so much trouble."

  Reiko liked Chiyo for caring about other people's feelings even after her terrible ordeal. "I'm sorry we had to meet under such circumstances."

  Chiyo's face crumpled.

  Reiko had to force herself to say, "My husband wants me to ask you about what happened. Can you bear it?"

  Chiyo nodded meekly. A tremulous sigh issued from her. "But what good will it do?"

  "It will help my husband catch the man who hurt you."

  Tears trickled down Chiyo's drenched face. Her eyes were so red that she looked as if she were weeping blood. "Suppose he does. Nothing will change. My husband won't take me back. Last night he told me I was dead to him, dead to our children. Once he loved me, but he doesn't anymore. He looked so stern, so hateful." She wailed, "I'll never see my babies again!"

  Reiko could hardly bear to imagine her own children ripped away from her. Alarmed at Chiyo's suffering, she urged, "Wait a while. Your husband may feel differently."

  "No, he won't," Chiyo insisted. Reiko's sympathy and family connection made Chiyo speak more frankly than she might have with another stranger. "He's a good man, but once he makes up his mind, he never changes it."

  How Reiko deplored male obstinacy and pride!

  "He thinks I've dishonored our family." Chiyo sobbed. "I think maybe he's right."

  "Why?"

  "Because I brought it on myself."

  "No, you didn't," Reiko said firmly. "My husband told me what you said happened at the shrine. You left your group because your baby was upset. You got kidnapped. That wasn't your fault."

  "That isn't all that happened. I remember more than I told your husband. It's coming back to me in bits and pieces."

  Controlling her eagerness for information, Reiko spoke gently: "What else do you remember?"

  "I took my baby into the garden, and I nursed him." Chiyo's arms crept out from under the quilt and cradled around the infant who should have been there but wasn't. "I heard someone moaning behind a grove of bamboo. He called for help. I went to see what was wrong."

  Women were taught from an early age to put themselves at the service of others, and Chiyo had an obliging nature. Reiko understood what must have happened, and she burned with anger at the rapist. "He lured you to him by playing on your kindness."

  "But I was stupid!" Chiyo cried. "I fell for the trick. I deserve for my husband to divorce me and take our children."

  Women were also taught to be humble and accept responsibility for whatever ills came their way. "No!" Reiko said. "You couldn't have known it was a trick. Neither could anybody else. Don't blame yourself."

  Weeping contorted Chiyo's face. "My husband does."

  So would most other people, Reiko thought sadly. "Your husband is wrong."

  "I'm fortunate that my father hasn't cast me off, too."

  Most fathers probably would shun a daughter who'd been violated. The fact that Major Kumazawa hadn't bespoke his love for Chiyo. Perhaps Sano's picture of him as a rigid, tradition-bound samurai wasn't completely accurate.

  "Your father has put the blame exactly where it belongs-on the man who hurt you," Reiko said. "He wants to catch him and punish him. So do I." She felt her own taste for vengeance. "Don't you?"

  "Oh, I don't know." Chiyo looked worried at the thought of taking direct action against anyone. She probably didn't have a vengeful bone in her body, Reiko thought. "But if that's what everyone else wants…"

  "We want justice for you. But we need your help."

  "All right." Chiyo was clearly used to obeying authority. "What do you want me to do?"

  "Tell me everything you can remember about the kidnapping and the attack. Let's begin with the man who tricked you. What did he look like?"

  Chiyo pondered, frowned, then shook her head. "I don't know. I recall walking up to the bamboo grove. After that, everything is a blank until…" A shudder wracked her body. "Until I woke up." Chiyo turned her face into the pillow, as if hiding from the recollection.

  Reiko speculated that Chiyo had been grabbed, then forced to drink a potion that rendered her unconscious and erased memories. She leaned forward, bracing herself to hear the awful details of the rape. She spoke quietly, trying not to pressure Chiyo. "Then what happened?"

  "He… he touched me where no one but my husband has ever touched." Chiyo drew deep breaths and swallowed hard. "He suckled milk from me. And… he bit me."

  She opened her robe. On her breasts, around the nipples, were curved rows of tooth marks, red and bloody. Reiko winced. "Did you see his face?"

  "Only for a moment. Everything was misty and blurry. It was like…" Chiyo fumbled for words. "I once read a poem about a pavilion of clouds. It reminded me of that."

  Reiko wondered if the clouds had been a hallucination caused by a drug.

  "The clouds covered his face, except for his eyes and mouth," Chiyo said.

  He'd worn a mask, Reiko deduced.

  Chiyo shrank against the cushions, reliving her fear. She whispered, "He was so ugly and cruel. Like a demon."

  "Was he someone you recognized? Did he seem familiar?"

  "No. At least I don't think so."

  "Would you recognize him if you saw him again?"

  "Perhaps," Chiyo said uncertainly.

  Reiko hid her dismay at the idea that the rapist might get away with his crime because Chiyo had so little memory of it. "Can you remember anything that might help us identify him?"

  More shudders convulsed Chiyo. "His voice. While he did it, he muttered, 'Dearest mother. My beloved mother.' "

  Reiko felt her own body shiver with disgust at the rapist's perversion. "Did you hear anything besides his voice?"

  "The rain and thunder outside."<
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  That didn't help narrow down the location; it had been raining all over Edo for days. And maybe Chiyo had imagined the clouds she'd seen. "Clouds and rain," was the poetic term for sexual release. Maybe the drug had conjured up the clouds and linked them with the rain, and her violation, in her dazed mind.

  "Think again. Can you remember anything else at all?" Reiko said hopefully.

  "I'm sorry, I cannot." Chiyo sighed, exhausted and weakened from reliving her ordeal. "I went back to sleep."

  Then she froze rigid, her muscles locked in a sudden, brief spasm. Her expression alternated among shock, fright, and horror. "No! Oh, no!"

  "What's wrong?" Urgency seized Reiko. "What do you remember?"

  "Something new. I woke up again. Just for an instant. Because he slapped my face." Chiyo touched her cheek. "And I heard him say that if I told anybody what he'd done to me, he would kill me, and kill my baby, too."

  Her voice rose in hysteria. "I told! And I shouldn't have! Now I'll be punished. Now my baby is going to die!"

  "That's not going to happen," Reiko assured Chiyo. "You're safe here. Your father will protect you. My husband and I will catch the man before he can make good on his threat." Reiko would do everything in her power to deliver the monster to justice. Even though she knew there was no guarantee that she would succeed, she said, "I promise."

  10

  Sano and his entourage arrived in the street where he'd found Chiyo. The rain had stopped for the moment. The balcony that had sheltered him and his men belonged to one of several shops in a row that sold confectionaries. Lines of customers extended outside the doors. Sano worked his way down the row, asking shopkeepers if they'd seen Chiyo stumbling through the rain yesterday.

  "I saw her," said one man as he wrapped cakes. "I thought she was just a drunken whore."

  Sano retraced Chiyo's footsteps around a corner and down another block, whose shops sold religious supplies. Two dealers had seen Chiyo; the rest hadn't. Dividing the shops was an alley, wider than the usual narrow space that ran between buildings. It was a firebreak, designed to reduce crowding and prevent the spread of fires, and apparently used as a side street. Sano and Detectives Marume and Fukida walked down the alley, skirting puddles. Balconies overhung recessed doorways and malodorous nightsoil bins. As he examined the paving stones, Sano spotted blood that had collected in the cracks. He pictured Chiyo falling, hitting her head.

  "This is where Chiyo was dumped," Sano said.

  An old woman with a tobacco pipe clamped between her teeth hobbled out on a balcony, picked up a quilt that had been left out in the rain, wrung out the soaked fabric, and cursed. Sano called up to her, "Did you see anyone come through here yesterday, during the storm?"

  "An oxcart. They take a shortcut instead of going around the block." The woman puffed on her pipe, which gave off foul smoke. "There's just enough room for them to squeeze through, but they scrape the walls. And the oxen leave dung. Filthy beasts! I pick up the dung, save it in this bucket, and throw it at the drivers." She cackled.

  "Chiyo must have been dumped from that oxcart," Sano said to his detectives, then asked the woman, "Did you get a look at the driver? What was the cart carrying?"

  "No. I didn't see. It was covered by a piece of cloth."

  "He hid her under the cloth so no one would see her," Fukida said.

  "But who is 'he'?" Marume asked.

  "That's the question," Sano said. "Let's go find that oxcart." He recalled the construction site they'd passed yesterday. "I know where to start."

  The Hibiya administrative district near Edo Castle was thick with samurai. They filled the streets where government officials lived and worked in mansions protected by high stone walls. Some of them wore the silk robes of high rank, some the armor tunics of soldiers; all were equipped with the customary two swords of their class. Some rode in palanquins or on horse back followed by attendants; the lowlier trudged on foot. They all moved aside to make way for Hirata.

  As he rode down his cleared path through the crowd, his reputation as the top martial artist in Edo cloaked him like a golden suit of armor. Rumor said he could read minds, see behind him, anticipate an opponent's every move, and communicate with the spirit world.

  There was truth to the rumor. His training had developed mental powers that everyone had to some degree but few ever learned to exercise.

  Part of his perception focused on his surroundings. It noted the faces he passed, the plod of hooves and sandals on wet streets, the rustle of straw rain capes, the bright umbrellas. The other part, honed by arcane training rituals, sensed the energy auras around each human being. In each pattern of heat and light and vibration he could read personality and emotion. Some pulsed faintly, the auras of weak wills; others flared with confidence. In battle, the aura functioned as a warrior's first line of defense, a shield. A strong aura could deflect blows as effectively as a sword could and defeat an enemy without a single strike.

  In present company, no aura was as powerful as Hirata's.

  Now Hirata perceived a configuration of arrogance and recklessness in three auras among the crowd. They belonged to three young soldiers who came riding toward him. The men jumped from their saddles and blocked his path. The tallest one had eyebrows like black slashes, an out-thrust square jaw, and the lean, muscular physique of a man who spent much time at martial arts practice, unlike many samurai. His armor tunic sported the Tokugawa crest. He swaggered up to Hirata and said, "I challenge you to a duel."

  Hirata experienced a sinking sensation. "You don't want to do this," he said.

  "What's the matter? Are you scared I'll beat you?" the soldier taunted. "Come down and fight!"

  This wasn't the first time Hirata had been challenged. A reputation like his had certain disadvantages. He'd lost count of how many samurai had accosted him, eager to prove their fighting skills superior to his. So far none had succeeded. But they'd caused Hirata serious problems nonetheless.

  The soldier's companions yelled, "Coward! Loser!"

  A crowd gathered around Hirata and the samurai, avid for a fight. "Well?" the soldier shouted. "Aren't you going to defend your honor?"

  "I'm going to give you a chance to save your life," Hirata said. "Go, and we'll pretend this never happened."

  The soldier went red with anger. "Are you saying I'm not good enough to fight you? In front of all these people?"

  "I'm saying don't be foolish."

  "I'll make you fight me," the soldier huffed. He looked around the audience and spied a teenaged peasant boy, a servant. "Hey, you! Come here."

  The boy looked dismayed to be drawn into the argument. The soldier's friends grabbed him. They shoved him at the soldier, who drew his sword and said to Hirata, "If you won't, I'll fight this boy instead."

  Hirata was appalled at the lengths to which men would go in order to provoke him. "Wait," he said, and jumped off his horse. He couldn't let an innocent bystander suffer.

  The spectators cheered as he strode forward. He seized the friends, twisted their arms, and flung them to the ground. They shrieked. The boy scampered off unharmed. The soldier yelled and charged at Hirata, waving his sword.

  Hirata's mind and body instinctively united in action. He drew a deep breath that aerated his entire body. His heart pumped blood and energy through his veins as a mystic trance came upon him. His perception expanded. He projected his vision into the future. It showed him ghostly images where the people would move in the next few moments. He saw the soldier coming as if in slowed motion, his ghost one step ahead of him. The ghost's sword traced curving, shimmering lines that the real blade would soon follow. Hirata glided between the lines. The soldier's sword whistled harmlessly around him. Hirata launched a kick at the ghost.

  A split instant later, his foot struck the soldier's stomach. The soldier howled, flying backward into the crowd, which scattered to get out of his way. He hit the side of a building. His head banged against the wall. His face went blank. He slid down the wall, leaving
a red smear where his head had hit. He sagged onto the ground, his scalp bleeding profusely.

  Hirata's awareness reverted to normal. The ghostly images and energy auras faded; his breathing and pulse slowed. He found himself in the center of a silent, awestruck audience. The soldier lay crumpled, motionless. His friends rushed to him, crying, "Ibe-san! Are you all right?"

  "He'll wake up soon," Hirata said with more confidence than he felt. He was good at gauging the force necessary to subdue attackers without killing them, but he hadn't anticipated the wall meeting Ibe's head.

  "Let this be a lesson to anyone who wants to challenge me," Hirata announced.

  The crowd dispersed. As the friends of the soldier hoisted him onto his horse and led it off, along came a doshin Hirata knew from his police days. The doshin, named Kurita, was an older man with a rough, cheerful face, dressed in a short kimono and cotton leggings. In addition to his swords he wore a jitte-a metal wand with a hook above the hilt for catching an attacker's blade-standard police equipment. His three assistants followed him, armed with rope for restraining criminals.

  "Well, if it isn't Hirata-san," he said. "Not another duel! Haven't you been warned about that?"

  "Yes, by the shogun himself, no less."

  The shogun had heard reports of the duels and not been pleased. He abhorred violence, and he'd ordered Hirata to cease dueling and threatened him with banishment if he didn't stop.

  "We can't have you killing and maiming Edo's best young men, especially those from the Tokugawa army," Kurita said.

  "If Edo's best young men would leave me alone, there'd be no problem," Hirata said.

  He rode to police headquarters, a walled compound in the southern corner of the Hibiya district. Guards let him through the ironclad gate, into a courtyard surrounded by barracks and stables. A few criminals, recently arrested, their hands bound with rope, huddled miserably under the dripping eaves, awaiting an escort to jail.

  Hirata strode into the main building. The reception room was a cavernous space divided by square pillars that supported a low ceiling. Messengers crouched on the floor and smoked pipes that fouled the air. Closed skylights leaked water into buckets set on the platform where three clerks knelt at desks. The chief clerk greeted Hirata and said, "It's been a long time."