The Cloud Pavilion (29 page)

Sano thought how strange it was to hear Yanagisawa pay him a compliment. It was even stranger that Yanagisawa didn’t seem to mind that this estate belonged to Sano now.

“Nanbu also gave me a description of the boat,” Sano said. “It’s approximately forty paces long, with a single mast, a square sail, a cabin with a red tile roof on the deck, and three sets of oars below.”

Once the kennel manager had realized that his cooperation could save him from being punished for Lady Nobuko’s kidnapping, he’d spewed information so fast that he’d reminded Sano of a horse with diarrhea.

“I’ve sent troops to seize the boat if it’s there, or to trace it if it’s not,” Sano said. “I expect a report soon.”

“In case they don’t find it, we’d better start searching all the waterways,” Yanagisawa said.

Sano took up a writing brush and dipped it in ink. He happened to glance toward the door and saw Masahiro standing outside the room, watching with avid curiosity. Sano frowned. Masahiro retreated. Sano said, “I’ll cross out the waterways that a boat that size can’t pass.”

“I’ll help you,” Yoritomo said.

He seemed to have put aside his animosity toward Sano, but then he was smart enough to realize that if they didn’t band together and find Lady Nobuko, both families would suffer.

Even after Sano and Yoritomo marked off the waterways that were too narrow or shallow to accommodate the floating brothel, there remained the whole Sumida River, plus wide stretches along other rivers and canals. Yanagisawa took the brush from Yoritomo and drew a line around half the area. “My army will search these,” he told Sano. “Yours can do the others.”

He and Yoritomo left. Marume said, “I hate to think of how many boats there are that fit the general description.”

“And ours has no name or other distinctive features, according to Nanbu,” said Fukida.

“Whoever owns it wouldn’t want to call attention to it,” Sano said. All brothels outside the Yoshiwara licensed pleasure quarter were illegal. Nanbu had claimed he didn’t know the name of the boat’s owner.

“Finding it could take forever,” Marume said glumly.

Hirata entered the room. He said, “Maybe not.”

Sano and Hirata stood over the two oxcart drivers, who lay in a muddy courtyard inside Edo Jail. Jinshichi’s and Gombei’s hands were tied behind their backs and their ankles bound with rope.

The big, muscular Jinshichi glowered at his captors from beneath his heavy brow. In the short time he’d spent on the run, his whiskers had grown into a bristly beard. The scar on his cheekbone was flushed red with anger, but he didn’t speak.

Gombei, the wiry younger man, squirmed as he said to Sano, “Why are we under arrest again?” He now had three teeth missing. He’d lost another one during the tussle with Hirata, while resisting arrest. His grin oozed blood. His cunning eyes sparkled with fright. “We haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Then why did you run away from the men I sent to watch you?” Sano said.

“We got tired of being spied on,” Jinshichi said sullenly.

“It’s not our fault they couldn’t keep up with us,” Gombei said. Nervous ness edged his good humor.

“We’re innocent,” Jinshichi said. “We already told you so.”

“Why were you hiding out on Ishikawajima?” Hirata asked.

Despite some misgivings, Sano had decided to let Hirata participate in the interrogation. Hirata had caught the drivers; he deserved to help question them. And his mysterious pursuer hadn’t yet made another appearance.

“We weren’t hiding,” Gombei said with earnest sincerity. “We couldn’t go to work because your soldiers would have found us. We needed to make money.”

Sano was fed up with evasions. Instinct and evidence told him the men were guilty of kidnapping if not rape. “What’s the matter, didn’t you make enough by kidnapping women?”

“We didn’t touch those women,” Jinshichi said, surly and vexed. “They told you so themselves.”

Gombei grinned and licked blood from his lips. “You had to let us go last time.”

“Not this time.” Although Sano was opposed to torture, for once he must bend his own rules. But he would employ the mildest form of torture, one used primarily for women.

Into the courtyard walked two jailers. They were
eta
, toughs dressed in ragged clothes stained with sweat, grime, and blood from previous torture sessions. Sano said, “Perform
kusuguri-zeme
on these prisoners.”

Kusuguri-zeme
was the term for torture by tickling. It was considered harmless, and perhaps sexually arousing for male torturers when they performed it on women. The
eta
didn’t look thrilled by the prospect of applying it to the oxcart drivers, but Jinshichi and Gombei chortled.

“Do you really think you can tickle us into confessing?” Gombei said.

“We’ll see,” Sano said.

The
eta
crouched beside the drivers, removed their sandals, and began tickling their feet. Gombei flinched and giggled. A smile tugged Jinshichi’s mouth. Soon both men were laughing uproariously. The
eta
worked with grim concentration. Hirata’s face was expressionless, his emotions under control. Sano suppressed the urge to laugh. Mirth was contagious.

“Don’t let them make you say anything,” Jinshichi ordered Gombei as they guffawed and thrashed.

“I won’t,” Gombei said, gasping for breath. His body jerked involuntarily; distress showed through his humor. “No matter what.”

The
eta
proceeded to tickle the men’s armpits. Gombei and Jinshichi bucked, contorted, and tried to roll away from their tormenters. Their laughter took on a ragged, hysterical edge.

“Did you kidnap my cousin Chiyo?” Sano said. The men just kept laughing. Sano prompted, “She was the woman with the baby. At Awashima Shrine. You took her, didn’t you?”

“No,” Gombei blurted between giggles.

Jinshichi shook his head, panted, and roared.

“Suit yourselves,” Hirata said.

The
eta
poked their fingers between Jinshichi’s and Gombei’s ribs, along their waists. Soon the men were covered with mud, sobbing while they laughed. Suddenly it didn’t seem funny to Sano anymore. The line between mirth and misery had been crossed.
Kusuguri-zeme
didn’t inflict permanent damage, but it caused as much distress as pain did. It was cruel torture indeed. Sano stoically forced himself to watch. He told himself these men were criminals who deserved to suffer until they talked.

“I can’t bear it any longer,” Gombei whimpered while he laughed and choked. “Make them stop, and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know!”

The
eta
looked to Sano, who nodded. They stopped tickling, rose, and backed away from the prisoners. Gombei moaned and wept with gratitude. Jinshichi said to his partner, “You stupid coward.” He was gasping as hard as if he’d run all the way across town. Both men’s faces were awash in dirt and tears. Sano felt almost as relieved as they did.

“Did you kidnap my cousin?” Sano repeated.

“Yes,” Gombei said weakly. “We gave her a potion that we buy from a druggist in Kanda. It makes people go to sleep, and they can’t move.”

Jinshichi muttered in disgust, but he nodded.

“Who hired you to kidnap her?” Sano asked.

“I don’t know his name,” Gombei said.

“He’s lying,” Hirata told Sano.

“Ogita, Nanbu, or Joju,” Sano said. “Which one was it?”

Startled, Gombei said, “How—?”

“How did I find out who your customers are?” Sano explained, “I’ve been checking into your background since we last met. The proprietor at the Drum Teahouse told me about your side business. He was happy to supply the names.”

“I’ll kill that rat,” Jinshichi fumed.

“If you live long enough,” Marume said. “Tell Chamberlain Sano which one raped his cousin.”

“It was Ogita,” Jinshichi said, reluctant to confess, yet eager to avoid more tickling.

At last Sano knew the truth. At last he had a target for the anger he felt on behalf of Chiyo and his newfound clan. He thought of Ogita lying to his face, and an intense hatred filled him like venom infusing his veins, like hot smoke suffocating his lungs. He wanted to lash out at the merchant and strike him down. But Ogita wasn’t here, and now wasn’t the time for Sano to let loose his temper.

“Ogita wanted a woman who’d just had a baby,” Gombei said. “He wanted to drink milk from her breasts while he had sex with her. You can’t get that in Yoshiwara. So we went to Awashima Shrine. It always has plenty of new mothers. All we had to do was pick one who looked easy. I pretended I was hurt, I called for help, and she came right to me.”

That he could speak so casually about his crime! Sano felt his hatred grow to encompass the oxcart drivers for their part in Chiyo’s rape.

“I didn’t know she was your cousin,” Gombei said. “If I had, I’d have kidnapped somebody else.”

Sano wanted to grab the man by his hair, grind his face into the dirt, wipe off its sheepish expression, then cut off his head. But he wasn’t finished with Jinshichi. “You did kidnap somebody else, didn’t you? The girl Fumiko.”

“No,” Gombei said. “We never—”

“Was she for Nanbu, or Joju?” Sano said.

Jinshichi said, “Keep quiet! He’ll kill us!”

Sano motioned to the
eta
. They moved toward the prisoners. Gombei hastily said, “No! Please! All right! She was for Nanbu. He happened to see her when he and his men were catching dogs at Ueno Temple. He wanted her, but he found out she was the daughter of Jirocho the gangster, and he was afraid to take her himself. So he hired us.”

Sano was almost as disgusted by Nanbu’s cowardice as by his taking pleasure at the expense of a helpless young girl. “Did he hire you to kidnap the nun, too?”

“No. That was Joju. He likes high-class old ladies.”

It was the priest who’d infected the nun with genital disease. He was responsible for her suicide and therefore indirectly guilty of murder. Sano thought about the similarities between the nun and the shogun’s wife. He glimpsed a light through the dark tangle of this investigation.

“He’s confessed to everything,” Jinshichi said with a bitter look at his partner. “Just kill us now.”

“Not quite everything,” Sano said. “There’s another victim besides the three we’ve discussed. The nun wasn’t the only woman you kidnapped for Joju, was she?”

An air of caution fell over the men. They seemed to shrink into themselves under its weight. Their gazes avoided each other as well as Sano and his men. Gombei said, “There were only three.”

“Four,” Sano said.

“Can’t you count that high?” Hirata mocked the drivers.

“Maybe they have short memories and they’ve forgotten about the shogun’s wife,” Sano said.

“
What?
” Jinshichi and Gombei spoke in unison; they stared in disbelieving, apparently genuine shock.

“The shogun’s wife went missing yesterday,” Sano said. “I think she was kidnapped.” He pointed at the two men. “By none other than you.”

Now they did look at each other, with appalled expressions. Jinshichi blurted, “You didn’t tell me she was the shogun’s wife.”

“I didn’t know!” Gombei cried, too upset to deny the charge or keep his mouth shut. “I thought she was just some old lady.” He turned to Sano. “I swear!”

“You’re in even bigger trouble now,” Hirata said. “The shogun will have your head cut off for that.”

“Not just yet.” Sano addressed the captives: “Tell me what happened.”

“We needed money,” Gombei said. “We went to see Joju the day before yesterday. He said that if we brought him another old lady, he’d pay us enough money to get out of town. So we went and found her.” He moaned. “Of all the women in Edo, it would have to be the shogun’s wife. What rotten luck!”

“Your luck is about to improve,” Sano said. “Answer a few more questions, and maybe I’ll let you live. Here’s the first one: Did you take the shogun’s wife to the same boat as the other women?”

“He knows about the boat,” Jinshichi said dolefully. “He knows everything.”

“I take it that means yes,” Sano said. “Here’s the second question: Where is the boat?”

Jinshichi began to speak, but Gombei prevented him by yelling, “Shut up!” Gombei’s eyes shone with desperate cunning. “Even if we tell you where the boat is, you won’t be able to find it by yourself. To you, it would look the same as a thousand other boats. How about if we take you there?”

He grinned. Sano knew Gombei was buying time, hoping that on the way to the boat he and Jinshichi would find a way to escape. But Sano had no time to argue or negotiate; without the men as guides, he might not get to Lady Nobuko before the shogun’s deadline.

“All right,” Sano said, “but I’m warning you: no tricks.”

The smoke from the crematoriums hung in a cloud over Inaricho district.

Reiko could see the smoke, lit by the full moon, rising like a ghostly fog in the distance as she and Chiyo rode in her palanquin. The light from lanterns hung on poles attached to her bodyguards’ horses didn’t extend beyond the roadsides. The vast darkness of the rice fields resonated with a cacophony of frogs singing and insects buzzing. At this late hour, Reiko, Chiyo, and their escorts were the only travelers going to Inaricho.

Inaricho was a backwater, situated between two major temple districts. Reiko could see lights flickering far ahead in Ueno to her left and Asakusa to her right, but Inaricho would have been invisible if not for the smoke. It was a perfect location for cemeteries, and for the crematoriums in which dead bodies burned overnight. Inaricho was conveniently near the temples where funeral rites were held and distant from Edo proper, where crematoriums were outlawed because of the fire hazard.

“Jirocho must have chosen the pauper’s cemetery because he knew it would be deserted,” Reiko said.

“He’ll have privacy for his business,” Chiyo agreed.

Few people ventured into these parts at night. As her procession entered the smoke cloud, Reiko smelled the awful odor of burning flesh. She and Chiyo held their sleeves over their noses and mouths, but the odor was so strong she could taste it. Her escorts coughed. Their lanterns lit up the smoke and colored it orange. The procession moved as if through fire, toward some hellish netherworld.

The bearers set down the palanquin in the main street, where shops sold altar furnishings such as Buddha statues, candle holders, gold lotus flowers, and incense burners. The shops were closed, abandoned by the living, surrendered to the dead until day came. The bearers were breathing hard, tired from the journey, wheezing because of the smoke. Lieutenant Tanuma dismounted and said to them, “You stay here and guard the horses. We’ll walk from here.”

Reiko and Chiyo climbed out of the palanquin. As they and the bodyguards raced along Inaricho’s back streets, Reiko’s heart beat with quickening excitement and apprehension. Beyond small temples and shrines lay the cemeteries, enclosed within stone walls or bamboo fences. The sickening smell of burned flesh grew stronger. Reiko could feel the heat from the crematoriums.

“Which way?” Lieutenant Tanuma’s anxious face shone with sweat in the light from the lanterns that he and the other men had brought.

“I don’t know,” Reiko said. She’d never been to the paupers’ cemetery, and there was no one to ask for directions. “We’ll just have to look around.”

They tramped through the cemeteries. In each stood a crematorium, a massive, outdoor oven built of stone. Each had a shelter where mourners gathered in the morning, when the oven was opened, to pick out bones and put them in an urn for burial. Reiko heard sizzling inside the crematoriums. The smoke that poured from their vents was so thick that she and her comrades groped between the rows of square stone grave pillars carved with the names of the deceased. They tripped on vases of flowers and offerings of food and drink left for the spirits. But they saw no sign of Jirocho or Fumiko. Exhausted, nearly overcome by the smoke, they stopped in an alley to rest.

Bells in the temples tolled the hour of the boar, the time of the rendezvous. As their peals faded, Reiko heard another sound that sent shivers racing along her skin.

“Listen,” she whispered.

From somewhere in the distance came the noise of dogs barking. It grew louder, drew closer. Past the alley marched a horde of some thirty men. A few carried lanterns. They appeared to be samurai; they had shaved crowns and wore swords. Ten or twelve held the leashes of big dogs that sniffed the ground and barked. The man with the hugest, blackest dog walked with a swagger, legs spread wide and arms swinging.

“That must be Nanbu,” Reiko whispered. “He seems to know where he’s going.”

She and her companions followed Nanbu and his group to a gate that sagged on its hinges, into a cemetery enclosed by a rough stone wall. Reiko peeked through the gate and saw a large field thick with shrubs and high weeds. Nanbu and his men trudged within the light from their lanterns. Here, in the paupers’ cemetery, wooden stakes that bore names scrawled in fading ink marked the graves. Smoke billowed from a crematorium that had no shelter. Firelight glowed through cracks in its walls, like red veins.

“Fumiko must be there already,” Chiyo said.

Careless of her own safety, she hurried into the graveyard before Reiko could stop her. Reiko had no choice but to follow, crouching as she ran through the weeds around the perimeter of the field. Lieutenant Tanuma and her other guards thrashed after her, and she prayed Nanbu wouldn’t hear them. She caught up with Chiyo and pushed her behind the crematorium. There they hid with Tanuma and the guards. They watched Nanbu’s group gather in the middle of the cemetery.

“Where is that cursed gangster?” Nanbu said.

“This was a bad idea,” said a bald man with a prominent double chin. He wasn’t a samurai; he wore no swords. His cross voice had a deep, carrying resonance. “I shouldn’t have let you talk me into coming.”

Surprise stabbed Reiko. “That’s Ogita. I recognize him from my husband’s description. What are he and Nanbu doing together?”

Chiyo whispered urgently, “It’s him! I recognize his voice. He’s the man from the pavilion of clouds!”

Reiko saw one rapist matched up with his victim, like suits in a card game. Had Ogita, and Nanbu, also violated Fumiko? Was that why they were both here?

“Hey, you came to me when you got that message,” Nanbu said to Ogita. “You asked me what to do. This was my solution. If you have a better one, speak up.”

However they’d become acquainted, whether they’d both raped Fumiko or not, they’d evidently banded together to cope with Jirocho’s blackmail.

“Maybe we should just buy Jirocho off,” Ogita said.

Nanbu snorted. “You’re supposed to be an expert at business, you should know that won’t make him leave us alone. He’ll keep asking for more money until he’s bled us dry. This is the only way out.”

If the presence of his troops and dogs hadn’t made it clear to Reiko that he had other plans instead of paying blackmail, his words did. Some of the men must belong to Ogita; he’d brought his army, too. Chiyo had been right: There was trouble coming. Reiko looked at her six bodyguards. They were badly outnumbered.

“I don’t like this,” Ogita said. “We’re going to get in trouble.”

Nanbu laughed. “We’re already in trouble. Or have you forgotten what we had to do to get Chamberlain Sano’s spies off our tails?”

“You mean, what you did,” Ogita said.

“Hey, you didn’t stop me, you stood by and watched,” Nanbu said. “We’re in this together.”

Reiko realized that Nanbu and his men and dogs must have killed her husband’s troops. She was horrified because not only were the men dead, but they wouldn’t be coming to help.

“Besides, you’re the one who sent that incompetent fool to Major Kumazawa’s house,” Nanbu said. “If he hadn’t botched the job, we wouldn’t be in this mess now. You need me.”

At least Reiko now knew who was responsible for the assassination attempt on Chiyo and Fumiko.

“I never should have gotten mixed up with you,” Ogita said bitterly.

“It’s a little late for regrets,” Nanbu said. “When this is over, you’ll thank me.”

“When this is over, I never want to see your face again.” Ogita exclaimed, “A curse on the shogun’s wife! If she hadn’t gotten kidnapped, we wouldn’t have to worry about Jirocho.”

Reiko began to understand better why they’d formed this unholy alliance. If their problems had been only a matter of the crimes against Chiyo, Fumiko, and the nun, the two men could have gambled that Jirocho’s blackmail attempt was just a bluff and ignored his message. But now the shogun was looking for someone to blame for his wife’s disappearance. If Fumiko bore witness against Ogita and Nanbu, the shogun would probably take her at her word and decide they were responsible for whatever had happened to Lady Nobuko even if they weren’t. The two men had to destroy Jirocho before he destroyed them.

“We have to warn Jirocho,” Reiko whispered.

“But how?” Chiyo said.

They were trapped behind the crematorium, in the radius of its fiery heat. Reiko wiped her perspiring face on her sleeve. If they tried to leave the cemetery, Nanbu and Ogita would see them.

“We won’t have to worry about Jirocho much longer,” Nanbu said. “Just be patient.”

Reiko heard hissing sounds and dull thuds. Men among Nanbu’s and Ogita’s troops jerked as if they’d been struck. They cried out and clutched at arrows that had suddenly appeared in their chests and backs. Some fell dead or wounded. A dog with an arrow stuck in his side ran off squealing.

“What’s going on?” Ogita demanded as his group scattered. He groped after his guards; they drew their swords.

Nanbu struggled to restrain his dog, which lunged and barked wildly. He shouted, “It’s a trap!”

More hisses accompanied a storm of arrows that rushed out of the darkness beyond the cemetery. The men raised and swung their lanterns in a frantic effort to see who was shooting at them. More men fell. Stray arrows pelted the grass. As Nanbu’s and Ogita’s men tried to shield their masters, dark figures climbed onto the cemetery wall. Some took on the shape of archers with bows drawn; others were silhouettes equipped with spears. Some forty in all, they looked like demons risen from hell in the flame-lit smoke that swirled around them. One man wasn’t armed. Although short and pudgy, he had a confident, imperious stance.

“Hold your fire!” he shouted.

“It’s Jirocho,” Reiko whispered.

Laughter and samisen music blared in the moonlit fog over the Kanda River.

Sano, Hirata, Marume, and Fukida walked the two oxcart drivers along the footpath by the water, through the district known as Yanagibashi—“Willow Tree Bridge.” Here, the Kanda emptied into the Sumida River. Yanagibashi had once been a mere launching point for boats that carried passengers up the Sumida to the Yoshiwara licensed pleasure quarter, but an unlicensed entertainment quarter had sprung up in the area. Some of the boats moored at the docks and some of the teahouses on the riverbanks contained brothels with local prostitutes. But Yanagibashi had none of Yoshiwara’s glamour.

Cheap, garish red lanterns on the boats and teahouses reflected in the water. Raucous parties overflowed from verandas. Under the bridge, beggars slept. Men stumbled off boats returning from Yoshiwara. Girls called out from windows to them, soliciting their depleted reserves of cash and virility.

Sano had left his other troops behind, at the foot of the bridge, on advice he’d received earlier from Gombei.

“If the owner of the boat sees a big crowd of samurai, he’ll get suspicious,” Gombei had said.

If Sano were the owner of an illegal brothel boat and saw an army coming, he would cast off and take the boat down the Sumida River and out to Edo Bay. He might even dump the shogun’s wife in the ocean.

Gombei led the way with Hirata guarding him; Marume and Fukida followed with Jinshichi, who plodded sullen and silent between them. Sano brought up the rear. They avoided drunks vomiting into the water. Tough young townsmen roved, hunting people to rob.

“Which one is it?” Sano said as they passed boats.

“Farther down,” Gombei said.

“It had better be there,” Marume said, “or you and your friend are dead.”

“It will be. It will be!” Gombei’s voice was shrill with his fear that the boat had moved.

Sano felt the same fear as he wondered what was happening to the shogun’s wife. But he reminded himself that he had the three suspects under surveillance; they couldn’t rape Lady Nobuko. Continuing along the footpath, he observed that most of the boats were small, open craft with a single oar. But quite a few others were larger, some forty paces long, each with a single mast, a square sail, a cabin with a red tile roof on the deck, and three sets of oars below. Figures blurred by the mist boarded and disembarked, customers of the illegal floating brothels which all fit the description Nanbu had provided. The only detail Nanbu hadn’t mentioned was the red lanterns that hung from the eaves of the cabins. Gombei had spoken the truth: Without him as a guide, Sano would not have been able to pick out the right one.

Gombei stopped so suddenly that Marume, Jinshichi, and Fukida bumped into him and Hirata. He pointed at a boat moored two slips down the river. “That’s it,” Gombei said.

“How do you know?” Sano asked.

“Do you see that man on the deck?”

The man stood at the railing, facing inland, his tall, gaunt profile a dark silhouette. He had bad posture, his shoulders slumped, his hips and head thrust forward.

“He’s the owner,” Gombei said. “He takes a cut of the money our customers pay us for the women.”

“You’d better be telling the truth,” Sano said.

They strolled casually toward the boat, a party of friends out for the evening. “You stay on the dock and guard our informants,” Sano told Marume and Fukida. “Hirata-
san
and I will go aboard.”