The Iris Fan (38 page)

In the street, Yanagisawa’s troops fought the Tokugawa army. Horsemen against horsemen, foot soldiers against foot soldiers, one on one or in gangs, they plied swords and spears amid yells and collisions. This wasn’t like the Battle of Sekigahara, when rival warlords had met on an empty field and their armies had advanced in orderly ranks while the generals directed them from opposite ends. This was like every samurai street brawl, but on a grander scale. Bodies already littered the ground. Most wore the Tokugawa crest. The attacks on Lord Ienobu’s army had thinned its ranks.

Sano forged up the street with his squadron, following the advance troops that plowed through the forces ranged between him and Lord Ienobu. Other troops guarded Sano’s rear and flanked his squadron. Outside this cordon, men fought at half the speed as during an ordinary brawl. Stiff, heavy armor hampered their movements, weighed down their horses. Sano, too, was as much handicapped as protected by his armor. Arrows glanced off it, but his helmet obstructed his peripheral vision and distorted sounds. His tunic dug into his waist and armpits; he or it had changed shape since he’d last worn it. His horse, encased in its own armor, labored under him. The charge toward the castle was as slow as if through sludge instead of air. More soldiers disgorged from other
daimyo
estates joined the charge. A huge, growing military procession filled the wide avenues. But the Tokugawa army rallied, its soldiers cut down
daimyo
troops, and Sano saw that casualties on his side were heavy, too heavy. The mist turned to rain. In the distance, cannons boomed.

The storming of Edo Castle had begun.

At last Sano and his regiment reached the avenue outside the castle. It was a churning mass of fighters. Ranks had disintegrated as the Tokugawa forces outnumbered and overwhelmed Yanagisawa’s. The brawl had turned into a riot. Fighters ignored the trumpets, yells, and waving fans of the officers. Many had lost track of their mission—they’d reverted to young men caught up in an exciting free-for-all. Sano realized that he himself had lost track of something more vital—his duty. He was about to invade the castle where his lord lived. It was another line crossed. If the shogun were killed during the invasion, that would be blood which Sano could never cleanse off his honor.

But life-or-death combat made such concerns seem abstract and trivial, especially when one’s side was losing. Sano’s regiment barreled through the mass, toward the castle gate reserved for the shogun on his rare trips outside. Along the avenue, soldiers loaded cannons with gunpowder and iron balls, lit fuses, and fought off Tokugawa troops who tried to interfere. Deafened by explosions, Sano saw cannonballs fly like black comets and bombard the castle walls. Gunners fired at the towers and the guardhouse over the gate. Sparks flared in the windows of the corridors on the walls; gunshots rang out as the defenders fired down at the attackers. Men in the street, hit by bullets, went down under the fighters and horses as if sucked into a whirlpool. As Sano neared the gate, mounted Tokugawa soldiers assailed his regiment. Some of Sano’s troops took mortal strikes and died in the saddle. The Tokugawa soldiers broke through the cordon around Sano, Yanagisawa, Yoshisato, and Masahiro.

Sano lashed out his blade with all his might. To penetrate armor, one had to swing hard and hope to hit lacings instead of metal plates. His own armor slowed his movement. His steel struck steel as soldiers parried. He lashed again and his blade went through a soldier’s tunic. The soldier screamed, fell, and was gone. Yanagisawa and Yoshisato forged ahead of Sano toward the gate, where their troops were battering the ironclad planks with a ram. Masahiro and Marume were fighting other soldiers. They reached the bridge that spanned the moat. On the opposite side, the gate was open.

The invaders had breached the castle.

Arrows rained onto Sano and his comrades. Bullets pinged off them. Each one that hit Sano felt like a punch. For hundreds of years, samurai fathers and sons had fought together in battles, but no other father could have feared for his son more than Sano did for Masahiro as they rode into a seething crush of foot soldiers at the gate. Beyond it, battling troops crowded the passage.

“Dismount!” Sano yelled as he jumped off his horse.

Masahiro, Marume, Yanagisawa, Yoshisato, and the troops from what was left of their regiment—some twenty men—followed suit. Without horses, they could maneuver more easily and quickly. Their troops cleared a narrow path through the crush. Sano and Masahiro were through the gate. Ahead, within the uphill passage, Yanagisawa’s advance troops fought the Tokugawa army. Archers and gunners in the corridor and towers above fired down. It was like shooting fish in a trough. Arrows and bullets hit defenders as well as invaders. Yanagisawa’s gunners and archers fired back, but the rain-soaked passage filled with dead bodies; the gray, noxious haze of gunpowder smoke; and the storm of missiles.

The only way to Lord Ienobu—and Reiko and Akiko—was through it.

*   *   *

REIKO AND AKIKO
ran through the Large Interior. The passages were deserted, the rooms empty. The chanting grew louder as they approached the main palace. Reiko heard booms in the distance—gunfire. The war had started. Yanagisawa’s forces would soon invade the castle. She thought of Sano and Masahiro, and she felt a sudden longing for her husband.

They’d parted on bad terms. She hadn’t even said good-bye to him. What if he should die before she saw him again?

This was no time for such thoughts. Reiko clung to her hope that exposing Lady Nobuko would somehow save the day. She kept moving. The building resonated with chants, a giant beehive with an ailing monarch at its heart. Drums kept rhythm. Incense smoke breathed through the passages. Reiko cautiously opened the heavy door decorated with carved flowers and found herself face-to-face with a guard who stood on the other side.

He was an older man she knew from when she’d lived in the castle. He frowned as he recognized her. “You’re Sano-
san
’s wife. You’re not supposed to be here.”

In an instinctive, single motion, Reiko drew the dagger from under her sleeve and lashed out with the blade as she said to Akiko, “Don’t scream!”

The guard staggered, clutching his gashed throat. Blood spurted between his fingers. Reiko pulled Akiko backward, away from the spraying blood as he fell dead across the threshold. Eyes wide with horror, Akiko clapped her hands over her mouth. Reiko felt a terrible, sickening guilt. A child should never have to see her mother kill. But a cold, matter-of-fact voice spoke from within Reiko’s warrior spirit:
Akiko was born into this family. For us it’s too often a choice between killing or being killed. She’d better get used to it.

“We have to go,” Reiko said.

They stepped over the dead guard, holding their skirts up out of his blood, and rushed through the palace. The chanting, drumming, and booms covered the sound of their footsteps. The last corridor was jammed with people. Gripping Akiko’s hand, Reiko plunged into the crowd. Servants fingered wooden rosary beads while they prayed. Reiko and Akiko pushed past them, jostled them, stepped on their feet. Murmurs arose: “Isn’t that Reiko and her daughter? How did they get in here?”

Wishing she weren’t so notorious, Reiko kept going; she dragged Akiko behind her. She was drenched with sweat from the heat of the packed bodies and her own anxiety. They turned a corner. The crowd here was all officials down the middle of the passage and guards along the walls. Reiko’s heart sank. The men heard the stir and turned.

Reiko and Akiko found themselves standing alone, conspicuous. The crowd had drawn back from the trespassers. Hostile faces stared at them. Akiko’s fingernails dug into Reiko’s hand. Reiko glanced over her shoulder. People craning their necks to see what was happening blocked her way out of the palace. Her fate and her daughter’s hinged precariously on this moment.

“I have to speak to the shogun.” Her voice was small, frightened. The chanting in the corridor stopped; people quieted down to listen. Fainter chanting and drumming came from the shogun’s chamber. The officials glared, confused and indignant. Guards advanced on her and Akiko. She’d gambled their lives for this instant. Quaking inside, she gulped. “It was Lady Nobuko who—”

Loud booms interrupted. From the outer section of the palace men’s voices yelled, “The castle is under attack!”

Terror sucked the breath out of Reiko. Yanagisawa’s army was here; her husband and son were with it. She and Akiko were caught in the middle of the attack. Thuds rocked the palace. The corridor became a turmoil of screams and pushing as guards charged through the crowd, toward the battle, past Reiko and Akiko. Two trespassers were a minor nuisance compared to an invasion. Reiko and Akiko fought their way against the tide. A chain-mailed elbow struck Reiko on the cheek. Feet stomped hers. Akiko’s hand was yanked from her grasp.

“Mama!” Akiko shrilled above the screams.

Reiko turned and saw Akiko fall beneath the mob. Akiko screamed as guards trampled her. Reiko threw herself at them, kicked, pummeled, and shoved. She pulled Akiko up, but men knocked them over. They crawled through a thrashing forest of armored legs and black silk robes. Someone kicked Reiko’s chin. Her ears rang. She and Akiko crawled free of the mob to the shogun’s bedchamber. Guards stood against the lattice-and-paper walls, flanking the door, ready to defend the shogun from the enemy. They didn’t notice Reiko and Akiko, crawling below their line of sight, until Reiko lunged at the door and yanked it open.

“Hey! You can’t go in there!”

She couldn’t think about what might happen to her and Akiko. She didn’t know what to do but finish what she’d started. They stumbled on their knees across the threshold. The chamber was hazy with incense smoke billowing from burners in the alcove. In a flash of mental clarity heightened by terror, Reiko absorbed the scene during the moment before the guards caught up with her and anyone else noticed her and Akiko. Lord Ienobu and a physician knelt on one side of the shogun’s bed, three priests beating drums on the other. At its end, Lady Nobuko, her head bandaged, knelt beside the lady-in-waiting whose mouth resembled a pickled plum. Many guards stood against the walls. The shogun looked like a corpse, with his eyes closed, his face waxen. Except for the priests, whose lips moved and hands drummed as they chanted prayers, everyone was as still as the shogun. Chins raised, their expressions taut with fear, they listened to the sounds of war coming.

The guards seized Reiko. Akiko cried, “Let go of my mother!” and pounded them with her fists. Lord Ienobu, Lady Nobuko, the physician, the priests, and the shogun’s guards swiveled toward the commotion. Surprise turned their expressions blank. The priests stopped drumming; prayers died on their lips. Lord Ienobu’s eyes bulged with anger. Reiko pointed at Lady Nobuko and cried, “She did it! She stabbed the shogun!”

Lady Nobuko jerked, alarmed by the accusation. Her right eye squinted with the pain from the headache that contracted her face. Her left eye glared at Reiko.

“Get them out of here and kill them!” Lord Ienobu ordered.

The guards dragged Reiko and Akiko toward the door. As they fought, Lady Nobuko twisted her gaunt body around, the better to see. The movement pulled up the gray silk sleeve that covered her right hand. Reiko saw the glint of a steel blade protruding from her fist.

“She has a knife!” Reiko cried. “Look out, she’s going to kill the shogun!”

The shogun cracked his eyes open. Everyone else turned in surprise to Lady Nobuko. She froze. Both her eyes opened wider with dismay. She must have wanted to make sure the shogun died before he could change his mind about leaving the dictatorship to Lord Ienobu. Her hand quickly withdrew into her sleeve. The shogun’s guards had seen the knife, and so had Lord Ienobu and the physician, but they were too stunned to react. Lady Nobuko hurled herself at the bed. She landed on her elbows and knees on the shogun. The impact jolted a grunt from him. The knife was now clearly visible in her hand. Her eyes were wild, her crooked yellow teeth bared. The bodyguards shouted, lunged at her, and grabbed her. As she scrambled toward the shogun’s head, her silk skirts slipped from their grasp. The men holding Reiko let her go and rushed to catch Lady Nobuko. The frightened priests ran out of the room. The bodyguards fell across the shogun as Lady Nobuko threw herself on Lord Ienobu.

Lord Ienobu exclaimed, “What are you doing?” There was a quick, furious tussle of flailing limbs and tangled robes. It ended with Lady Nobuko seated on the floor with Lord Ienobu’s head cradled in her lap. She held the knife to his throat.

“Let go of me!” Terror shrank Lord Ienobu’s voice into a croaky wheeze. His eyes rolled up toward Lady Nobuko. His fingers clawed feebly at her wrist, but she held him tight. With his hunched shoulders, and his feet waggling in the air, he looked like a beetle turned over on its back.

Reiko was astonished because Lady Nobuko had gone after Lord Ienobu instead of the shogun. The physician stared, dumbfounded. The bodyguards clambered to their feet and moved toward Lady Nobuko.

“Don’t come any closer!” The harsh, guttural voice sounded completely different from her ordinary one. It belonged to the animal inside the civilized woman.

The guards stopped, as much frightened by the change in her as by the possibility that she would hurt Lord Ienobu. Reiko realized what Lady Nobuko was doing. The same knowledge flashed in Lord Ienobu’s eyes. He said, “You don’t need me as a hostage. It doesn’t matter that you tried to kill my uncle. Before the day is over, I’ll be shogun. I’ll pardon you.” He laughed, his raspy cackle. “After all, I owe you a favor.”

Lady Nobuko laughed. “Do you think I stabbed the shogun for you?”

“Of course. Because we’re friends.” Stammering, Lord Ienobu pleaded, “Let me go!”

“That’s not why.” Lady Nobuko pressed the blade against his throat. “I did it because I found out Yoshisato was alive. I couldn’t let him come back and be the shogun’s heir again.”