The Old Men of Omi (22 page)

He found it just about an arm’s throw from where Sukemichi had fallen. The small figurine rested in a tuft of uncurling ferns. Akitada bent closer, hardly daring to breathe.

It could not be.

Sukemichi was much younger than the others: a mere forty years to their late sixties and seventies. And he was a ranking nobleman within his own domain.

But if a robber could have entered here, then the Jizo killer could have done the same.

Akitada straightened and called to Kosehira. The prefect had also returned and joined them.

Kosehira peered. “Dear me! It’s another one!” He picked it up to show the prefect.

Ishimoda chuckled. “It’s nothing. Just a cheap toy. It probably belongs to one of the children. We found it beside the body and tossed it aside.”

“It’s not a toy,” said Akitada, taking the Jizo and turning it in his hands. “The killer left this. It’s like the one that was found with the peasant Wakiya. You will have to send one of your men back down into the gorge where they found the other peasant. I think he’ll find another Jizo down there.”

The prefect gaped at him as if he had lost his mind.

Kosehira said, “Yes, I think you’d better, Prefect. Lord Sugawara thinks someone is killing people and leaving those things behind.”

“But that sounds mad.” The prefect looked confused.

“He may be.” Akitada held up the Jizo. “But if you find a Jizo in the gorge, we will be sure that the same man killed at least five people.”

Before the prefect could say anything else, one of the constables returned at a run. He waved a broken length of wood. “It was outside the wall,” he gasped. “I climbed up to get a better look, and there it was on the other side, caught in the crook of a branch. He must have thrown it over the wall.”

“Good man!” Akitada took the piece of wood. It was part of an ordinary walking staff, the kind people used on long journeys, sturdy but not as thick as the fighting staffs he and Tora had used. He looked at it carefully. One end had splintered off. The other was the part that touched the ground, and it bore traces of blood and a few black hairs. The killer had broken his weapon when he had killed Sukemichi and thrown the useless pieces away. “Yes,” he told the constable, “you have found the weapon that killed Lord Sukemichi. Or part of it. The rest must be in the same area.” He gave the grinning constable the promised piece of silver and sent him off to search for the other piece.

Later they began the questioning of the servants, the house servants first, and the stable hands and gardeners afterward.

Sukemichi’s personal attendant, a stiff, middle-aged man, froze further when asked about his master’s sleeping arrangements. Reluctantly, he told them that his master had had an occasional female servant in his room, but had slept alone on the night before his death. As for his relations with his wives, he had been accustomed to visiting them in their quarters. He could not identify Sukemichi’s bed partners.

The prefect looked uncomfortable, but Kosehira only waited until the servant had gone before saying, “I suppose if he’s taken to sleeping with that maid, his wives would not have been pleased. What if the Jizo really is a coincidence?”

Akitada frowned. “It took great strength to kill Sukemichi. I don’t think it was the work of a woman, though she could have ordered or hired a man to kill her husband. If he came from outside, it was either fortuitous for him that Sukemichi wandered about the garden alone, or he lay in wait for him. I don’t think this is a domestic quarrel. From what we have seen in the other cases, I would guess he came from the outside.”

“Oh,” said Ishimoda. “I see now that it makes sense to think it was this killer. I confess it’s a relief. Much better than involving the family.”

Kosehira gave him a pitying look. “He could have acted for someone in the family,” he said.

Akitada agreed, but he suspected strongly that this killer had his own motive. They continued their questioning without coming up with useful information. There was some agreement that the dogs had barked during the night, but evidently all the gates had been locked. Sukemichi had insisted on security because of his falcons. None of the people currently working inside the compound were recently employed, and none had the sort of freedom that would have allowed him to visit Otsu to carry out the other murders.

And there was still no clear motive.

The maid Mineko had nothing to offer except more tears and the fact that she had done nothing to deserve being dismissed.

One curious fact emerged when they were talking to the oldest servant in the compound. He was nearly seventy, a stable hand, and gave his name as Tosuke. Impressed by the old man’s sturdy appearance, Akitada asked him if he had any plans to retire as Wakiya and Juro had done.

“Oh, them!” Tosuke said with a sneer. “Lazy bastards both.”

Someone else had called them lazy. It seemed curious that Sukemichi’s father should have rewarded laziness with a gift of land. An idea began to form in Akitada’s mind. He said, “I take it you remember the time when Lord Sukemichi’s father was alive and they worked here?”

“I may be old but my memory’s good,” Tosuke snapped. “Maybe better than yours.”

Tosuke clearly took advantage of the fact that old people were allowed to say things that would get younger ones in trouble. With a smile, Akitada asked, “What do you remember about them?”

“Them or the old lord?”

“Either, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind as long as you make plain what you mean.”

Akitada almost apologized. “Very well. Were you surprised when Lord Sukenori gave them both a piece of land of their own?”

“No.”

“But it seems unlikely that he would reward laziness.”

The old man said darkly, “Not if it suits him.”

“Ah. So why did it suit him in their case?”

“How should I know? I wasn’t there.”

“You weren’t there when?”

The old man snapped, “I can’t be everywhere. Only the
kami
can do that.”

Akitada detected a steely glint in the old eyes and got a premonition that he was not going to get any more information. He tried anyway.

“I take it that something happened involving Wakiya and Juro. You weren’t there at the time, but you have a notion that they performed some service for which Lord Sukemichi gave them their land. Am I right?”

The old man cocked his head. “Have it your way. I wasn’t there, but I know they were lazy bastards.”

With an inward sigh, Akitada gave up. When the old man had gone, he said to Kosehira, “I wish we had the time to delve more deeply into the story of Sukemichi’s father’s surprising generosity, but I’m afraid it will take too much time and may well be irrelevant.”

Saburo was aware that something was wrong with Tora. He had realized it quickly after they had brought him back from the mountain. Once or twice, he had tried to ask him what had happened, but Tora had shaken his head and said, “Nothing.”

Tora’s glum mood had deepened greatly after the raid on the tribunal. At first, Saburo thought this was due to Sergeant Okura’s condition, but the sergeant had improved and Tora had not. His return to the capital and his wife and son had done little to lift his mood.

Not that Saburo did not have his own troubles. There was his mother for example. Only this morning, she had informed Hanae that it was high time she had another child. Pretty Hanae had burst into tears.

Saburo had told his mother, “I don’t want you to say hurtful things to my friends. You’ve made Hanae cry. Why did you do that?”

His mother had scoffed, “Women are a good deal tougher than you think. We are made to bear children. You should be glad I bore you. But I get little thanks from you or from your sister. I’ve slaved away my best years so you should have everything, and look at you! You went away never to return, and your sister threw me out of her house. But do I cry? No. I came from her to you to offer my help and support, because that is what mothers do.”

Saburo wished fervently she had not come. He had to watch her constantly lest she make more trouble. Cook would have walked out several times already if Saburo had not bribed her with pieces of silver from his savings.

As for his leaving her, it had been she who had given him to the monks who had made him a spy and sent him among their enemies.

He touched his scarred face. These days, he felt little beyond a scruffy growth of beard and greasy makeup to cover the worst. But those wounds had gone deep. And his visit to Enryakuji had brought back the horrors of that torture and given him nightmares again. And now he also worried about Tora’s moodiness. He had seemed all right when they brought him back, but Saburo knew some wounds go below the surface. And the fact that Tora would not talk about his stay even to him, suggested that something had left permanent scars beyond the bruises to his face and the wounds to his wrists.

The incident between his mother and Hanae convinced him to make another attempt to find out what was going on with Tora. He found him outside his small house, just sitting there on the steps to the veranda and staring down at his hands.

“There you are,” Saburo said in a tone of false cheer. “I came to apologize for my mother once again. I’m afraid she upset Hanae.”

Tora looked up. “It doesn’t take much these days,” he said listlessly. “Don’t worry. It’s not your mother. It’s me.”

Well, it was an opening.

Saburo sat down next to Tora. “So, what’s up with you then?”

Tora sighed. “Everything. I’m no good to anyone anymore.”

Saburo raised his brows. “What makes you think so?”

“It’s nothing to do with you.”

So he had been shut out again. Saburo thought a moment, then said, “I think it has everything to do with me.”

Tora raised his head. “Don’t be silly. How could my problems have anything to do with you? I tell you, it’s not your mother.”

“All right. I’m glad about that anyway. She’s a great trial to me.”

Tora’s lip twitched.

Encouraged, Saburo forged on. “I think it has something to do with what happened on the mountain.”

Tora turned away and started to get up.

Right, thought Saburo. That’s it. I thought so. He said, “Sit down, brother. I feel responsible for letting you go into that place when I knew better. If I tell you what happened to me, will you talk about what happened to you?”

Tora turned his head away. “Nothing happened to me.”

Saburo heaved a sigh. “I know it’s hard to talk about. I’ve kept it in for five years. But at some point it wants out, or it eats you from the inside. As if you’d swallowed a snake and it was chewing up your insides.”

Tora snorted. “You’ve got a way with words. You may have swallowed a snake, but I didn’t. Nothing’s eating me.”

“Will you listen? I’ve never talked about this to anyone.”

Tora nodded, but it was clear that he had no intention of sharing secrets.

“I was thirteen when my mother decided I should become a monk. It was obvious by then that I was short and scrawny and would never be much good in the army. She sent me to Nara. The monks there were good to me. They taught me how to read and write, how to keep accounts, and all the most important prayers. At first they sent me out to ask for food and money. I was still a child and looked so hungry and pitiful that people were always generous. But then I got older and was not quite so scrawny anymore. It was at that time that they noticed my only skill. I could climb just about anything and used to run along the monastery roofs like a cat, jumping from one building to the next. That’s when they decided to send me to Mount Koya to be trained by the
sohei
there. Only I wasn’t trained as a soldier monk. I was trained as a spy. I was very good at spying.”

“We’ve known that you were a monk and a spy,” Tora said dismissively. “The master didn’t like it.”

“No. I can see his point, and I don’t have much else to offer. As it is, I’m much older now and out of practice, so I’m not what I once was. But I haven’t told you what ended my career.”

“You got caught and carved up,” Tora supplied.

“Yes. That was later. Five years later. By then I’d made a reputation for myself. One day, my temple decided to send me to Onjo-ji. The two abbots were friends, you see, and Onjo-ji was having some problems with Mount Hiei. They wanted to know how many warriors Enryakuji had hired. There’d been rumors that they’d built a separate monastery on the mountain to accommodate their army. Onjo-ji’s abbot was afraid and wanted proof so he could petition the emperor to intercede.”

Saburo had Tora’s attention now. “And you went up there and found them?”

Saburo grimaced. “Yes. I got what Onjo-ji wanted, but I decided it wasn’t good enough, that I could get more by getting inside. I did get inside one night and climbed around the buildings without learning much. So I went back again and again. Once I almost got caught when a guard heard me jump down from a roof. I got away. The next night I found the hall where they had their meetings. I overheard plenty. They were planning to provoke a fight with the Onjo-ji monks and then attack the temple and burn it down.”

“How can monks behave like that?”

“Well, there are monks, and then there are
sohei.
The monks squabble amongst each other about doctrine, honors, and land, just like nobles. And just like nobles, they keep soldiers. The soldiers think like soldiers. They plan to attack.”

Tora said bitterly, “Most soldiers are honorable. Those bastards had no honor.”

“True. In a regular army they wouldn’t tolerate such men, but monasteries tend to be pretty gullible. They believe the men that come to them wanting to be monks. And they protect them from the police. To get back to my disaster: I was lying on one of the great beams above them and picking up all this interesting information when a cat got curious about what I was doing there. I tried to shoo it away with my hand, but the cat clawed me. It was an uneven contest. The cat hissed, they looked up, and I tried to flee. The cat was in my way, and in my hurry I slipped and fell right into the middle of their council of war.”