The Fire Kimono (13 page)

“What are you doing?” Sano asked.

“Making duck stew,” Hana said, “for your mother. To restore her strength.”

The Buddhist religion outlawed killing animals and eating meat, but made an exception for medical reasons. Hana must have sent for the duck from Edo’s wild-game market.

“How is my mother?” Sano asked.

“She’s asleep,” Hana said. “I hope you aren’t going to bother her with more questions. She needs rest.”

“I won’t bother her,” Sano said. At least not yet. “It’s you I want to talk to.”

“All right.” Hana spoke in the same irritated but indulgent manner as when Sano had pestered her during his childhood. The last drips of blood fell from the duck. She untied it. Holding it by the legs, she plunged it into a pot of water that boiled on a hearth.

“How long have you been my mother’s maid?” Sano asked.

“I was with her when you were little.” Hana swirled the duck in the boiling water. “Don’t you remember?”

“Of course.” Sano waved away the steam, which smelled of wet feathers. But he knew as little about Hana’s past as his mother’s. Hana had always been there, taken for granted; he’d never imagined her as a person with a life apart from his. “Were you with her before she married my father?”

“Yes.” Hana’s resigned, glum air said she’d expected an interrogation along these lines. She pulled the duck out of the pot. It was naked, the feathers scalded off, bits of down clinging to its dimpled pink skin. “Since she was a child.”

Sano asked the questions that had been foremost in his mind all day: “Why did she marry my father? Why didn’t she marry Colonel Doi?”

Hana rinsed the duck in cold water. She shook her head.

“Do you mean you don’t know? Or you just won’t tell me?”

“It’s not my place,” Hana said, thumping the duck onto a chopping board.

Sano was hurt and frustrated by her and his mother’s insistence on keeping him in the dark. “Not even to save her life? Any information about that time could help me prove that she didn’t kill Tadatoshi and find out who did.”

“Her broken engagement had nothing to do with the murder,” Hana said stubbornly as she took up a sharp knife. “Neither did her marriage to your father.”

“Let me be the judge of that.”

Hana clamped her mouth so tightly shut that it looked like a walnut, wrinkled around the slit, tough to crack.

“Maybe you don’t understand how much trouble my mother is in,” Sano said. “If I can’t prove she’s innocent, she’ll be executed.”

“I do understand.” The fear in Hana’s eyes said she did.

“She needs your help.”

Hana expertly slit the duck’s belly. “Has she ever told you how we met?” Sano shook his head. “My parents were servants to a family in town. They died when I was ten. I became a beggar. One day I was outside a food-stall in town, eating scraps that people had dropped on the dirt. Along came some rich samurai girls in palanquins. They laughed at me.” Hana plunged her hands into the duck and tore out glistening, pungent red entrails.

“One of the girls got out of her palanquin. It was your mother. She ordered her attendants to buy me a bowl of noodles. She kept me company while I ate, and she asked me about myself. When she found out I was an orphan, she took me home with her. Her parents said I was dirty and disgusting, but she insisted on keeping me. They finally gave in. She saved my life.”

Sano was surprised as well as moved by this tale, more astonished by his mother’s backbone than by her compassion. He’d never known her to stand up for anything. He began to realize where he’d gotten his own tendency to champion the underdog. But what had changed her? Was it only her marriage to his father, who’d been a strict, traditional, authoritative husband?

“Now I’ll do anything to save her life,” Hana said with passionate conviction.

“Anything but tell the whole truth,” Sano observed.

“Anything that will help her. Not telling old tales that won’t do her any good.”

“Let’s try another question,” Sano said. “Were you with my mother when she was a lady-in-waiting at Tadatoshi’s house?”

“Yes.” Hana flung intestines into a bucket, saved the deep red liver and heart.

“Then you knew the people there.”

“I was just a maid.”

Servants knew their superiors better than most other folks did, and Hana was a shrewd observer. As a child Sano had been amazed at how she’d always known everything that went on in their neighborhood. “Who could have kidnapped Tadatoshi and killed him?”

“Not your mother. I swear.”

“I agree, but our opinion isn’t good enough. Can you remember what happened in that estate the day Tadatoshi disappeared?”

“The last time I saw him was the day the Great Fire started. We’d all heard about the fire, and his father decided we should go across the river. Everyone was rushing to get ready. But not Tadatoshi. He just hung around.

“Your mother and I packed some things to take with us. We didn’t know how long we would be gone. It was hard to decide what to bring and squeeze it into small bundles that we could carry.” As she washed the gutted duck, Hana seemed to get lost in the past. “That was when we heard that Tadatoshi was missing. His sister told us.” Hana’s memory drifted forward. “Oigimi was burned very badly in the fire. She almost died.”

“I gathered that when I met her today,” Sano said. “She still has scars.”

“I heard she never married,” Hana said. “She’s had a hard, lonely life. But when she was young, she was a very pretty girl. Still, she’s lucky to be alive at all. Anyway, her father said everyone had to look for Tadatoshi. Your mother and I helped search the estate. When nobody found him there, his father sent us all outside to look. If we had to scour the whole city, then so be it-we weren’t leaving without his son.” Hana’s expression turned grim. “We never left. Everyone from his estate was trapped by the fire, inside the city. Almost everyone died, all for the sake of one boy.”

His household might have escaped the fire had Tadatoshi not disappeared. If he’d been kidnapped, not gone off voluntarily, those deaths weren’t his fault. But Sano wondered if they were the motive for Tadatoshi’s murder.

“There were crowds in the streets, running from the fire,” Hana said. “Your mother and I got separated from the other people from the estate, but we managed to stay together. After the fire, we went back to the estate. It had burned down. But we found your mother’s parents and moved in with them. Their house was all right. They lived in Asakusa, which was countryside far away from town back then.”

Here was another fact about the grandparents Sano had never known. “When I was young, were they still alive?”

“Your grandfather died when you were nine. Your grandmother a few years later.”

Sano suddenly remembered two occasions somewhere around those times, when he’d found his mother weeping. She’d refused to say why. Now he realized that she must have heard about her parents’ deaths. “Why didn’t I ever meet them? Why did she pretend they’d died before I was born?”

“That’s not for me to say. It has nothing to do with the murder. Forget it.” Impatient, Hana flung the duck on the chopping board. “What I’m trying to tell you is that your mother didn’t have the chance to kidnap or kill that boy.” She grasped Sano’s hand. He had another sudden memory from his childhood, of teasing a horse and Hana snatching his hand away before he could be bitten. “I was with her the whole time.”

Her gaze held Sano’s, bright and fierce and unblinking. Sano didn’t have to wonder if Hana had told the whole truth; he knew she hadn’t. He knew she was doing it for the noblest motive, to protect his mother… or was she?

Sano looked down at her hand, locked around his. There was blood from the duck under her fingernails. Maybe she knew, for the best reason of all, that his mother hadn’t killed Tadatoshi. The idea seemed ludicrous, yet not beyond possibility.

For now Sano said, “How well did you know Colonel Doi?”

Hana paused before replying. Her eyes gleamed and she smiled, as if at a sudden recollection, or inspiration. “Well enough to know he didn’t get along with his master.”

It must have been obvious to her that Sano was fishing for that answer, and he couldn’t complain because she’d taken the bait suspiciously fast. “What gave you that idea?”

“I overheard Doi and Tadatoshi arguing,” Hana said.

“When was this?”

“A few days before the fire.” Hana picked up a cleaver.

“About what?” Sano asked.

“I don’t know,” Hana said. “I came in at the end. But I heard Doi say, ‘If you ever do that again, I’ll kill you.’”

Here at last was evidence against Doi. Not that Sano wasn’t pleased, but he said, “Are you sure that’s what you heard?”

Hana began to chop. Whack followed expert whack. Apart came the duck’s carcass. “I’m sure.”

Sano eyed Hana quizzically. “You remember a snatch of conversation from forty-three years ago.”

“A samurai threatening to kill his master isn’t something you see every day,” Hana said. “It stuck in my mind.”

“How convenient that it should pop up now.”

“Well, it did,” Hana insisted. “That’s what Doi said. And I’ll swear to it in front of the shogun.” She laid down her cleaver beside the neatly dismembered duck.

Hirata entered the kitchen compound and called, “Sano-san, the shogun is here to see you.”

“The shogun?” Sano was surprised, not just because Hana’s mention of the shogun had coincided with his arrival. “Here?” The shogun rarely came to visit. Sano couldn’t remember the last time. “What for?”

“He didn’t say, but we’d better not keep him waiting.”

The shogun sat on the dais in the reception room, with Yoritomo. Servants fanned up fires in charcoal braziers and positioned lacquer screens to shield him from cold drafts. Sano knelt on the floor and bowed, relegated to the subordinate position in his own house. Hirata followed suit. “Welcome, Your Excellency,” Sano said.

“Greetings,” the shogun said, as casually as if he visited every day.

Yoritomo, a frequent visitor, looked uncomfortable, his handsome face tense. He murmured a greeting.

“May I offer you some refreshments?” Sano said.

Refreshments were politely refused, offered again, and accepted. Servants laid out enough food for a banquet. As everyone sipped tea and the shogun and Yoritomo picked at sashimi, cakes, and dumplings, Sano said, “May I ask what brings you here, Your Excellency?”

“I wanted to talk to you. Away from my cousin.” The shogun glanced around nervously, as if Lord Matsudaira might be lurking nearby.

Sano was glad not to have Lord Matsudaira present, but also curious. “May I ask why?”

The shogun knitted his brow. “I know my cousin wants what’s best for me. But whenever he’s around, things become difficult and troublesome. Have you noticed?”

“I may have,” Sano said, trying not to look at Hirata.

“He has the greatest, ahh, respect and affection for me, but sometimes I feel as if he’s-” The shogun’s tongue worked inside his mouth, as if tasting unpleasant words. “As if he’s mocking me. Do you think so, too?”

Here was Sano’s chance to repay Lord Matsudaira for all the times Lord Matsudaira had maligned Sano to the shogun. Sano felt sorely tempted, but prudence forestalled him. If the shogun found out that Lord Matsudaira wanted to take over the regime, Sano’s own role in the power struggle might become exposed. And the shogun might forgive Lord Matsudaira, his blood kin, but never Sano the outsider, the upstart.

“Perhaps Lord Matsudaira has so much on his mind that he’s not aware of what impression he’s creating,” Sano said.

This evasion quelled the shogun’s fears. “Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps I’m, ahh, too sensitive.”

Sano heard Yoritomo let out his breath. Hirata sat silent, stoic and watchful.

“But at any rate, I came to ask you what, ahh, progress you’ve made in your investigation,” the shogun said. “And I’d just as soon my cousin didn’t join us.”

So would Sano. “I’ve interviewed Tadatoshi’s mother and sister. They don’t believe my mother killed him. In fact, they gave her a good character reference.” The shogun wouldn’t notice that the word of two women was weak compared to Colonel Doi’s without Lord Matsudaira to point it out. “They also identified someone who wanted Tadatoshi dead.” As he related their story about their relative wanting to advance his son up the line in the succession, Sano was glad that Lord Matsudaira wasn’t there to harp on the fact that the man was conveniently dead for Sano to frame.

“Ahh, a new suspect,” the shogun said, impressed.

But Yoritomo looked unhappy instead of pleased that Sano had made headway toward clearing his mother. Sano wondered why.

“And I’ve discovered that my mother has an alibi for the murder,” Sano continued. “Her maid was with her before Tadatoshi disappeared and during the whole time after.”

“So she couldn’t have, ahh, kidnapped and killed him,” the shogun deduced.

Lord Matsudaira would surely have denounced the alibi as fake, created by a loyal servant in debt to her mistress. But the shogun hadn’t the wits to think of that himself. Sano said, “Hana also identified another suspect. She heard him threaten Tadatoshi soon before he disappeared. It’s Colonel Doi.”

“Doi?” The shogun’s mouth fell open. “To think he accused your mother of the crime that he could be guilty of committing!” Enlightenment came over the shogun’s face. “Maybe he’s trying to protect himself.” His ability to draw mental lines between evidence and conclusions improved without Lord Matsudaira around to muddy the waters. “Well, Sano-san, I must say that I am, ahh, leaning toward believing your mother is innocent.”

Sano and Hirata exchanged a glance of cautious triumph.

Yoritomo cleared his throat and said, “Your Excellency, it’s not enough that Chamberlain Sano has produced other suspects besides his mother.” He gave Sano a look that was apologetic yet defiant. “We still don’t know who’s guilty.”

Sano regarded Yoritomo with surprise. They’d been friends for years, and Yoritomo had often professed himself willing to do anything for Sano. Why had he now taken on the role of detractor? Sano experienced a moment of deja vu. Once Yanagisawa had sat beside the shogun and belittled Sano. Now Yanagisawa’s son, his very image, was in the same place.

“Yes, that’s right. I still want to know who killed my cousin,” the shogun said, visibly cooling toward Sano. “What else are you doing to find out?”

Hirata spoke up. “I’m looking for an important witness, the tutor that Colonel Doi says was involved in the kidnapping and murder.” He described how he’d gone to the temple that Egen had once belonged to and learned that Egen had left town after the Great Fire. “I’ve begun a nationwide search for him.”

It sounded futile, but Sano was glad Hirata was making such a heroic effort. The shogun said peevishly, “Well, ahh, I guess that will have to do for now.” He held out his hand to Yoritomo, who helped him rise. “We must be going. It’s time for my medicine.”

As they walked toward the door, Yoritomo sidled past Sano, face averted. Sano signaled Hirata, who accompanied the shogun down the corridor, distracting him with conversation. Sano stood in front of Yoritomo so he couldn’t follow.

“What’s going on?” Sano asked.

Yoritomo looked at the floor. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes, you do,” Sano said. “You deliberately turned the shogun against me.”

“I only pointed out a fact that seemed worth mentioning.” Yoritomo’s voice quavered.

“I thought we were friends. What’s the matter?”

The shogun called, “Yoritomo-san! Come along!”

“I have to go.” Yoritomo ducked around Sano and scuttled down the corridor.

Sano was left with growing suspicions.