Relief flooded Midori. This was an easy question for a girl conditioned to respect authority. “I would obey.”
“What if you were ordered to do something you didn’t want to do?”
“It would be my duty to obey anyway,” Midori replied promptly.
“What if it meant doing something you thought was wrong?”
Frowning, Midori hesitated while she tried to figure out what answer he wanted. Anxiety knotted her stomach. “I’d obey because I would think that my superior knew what was right or wrong better than I.”
“Even if what you were ordered to do was against the law?”
Midori was perspiring, although her hands and feet felt like lumps of ice. She didn’t think she should say she would break the law; nor did she want the sect to believe she would rebel against authority.
“Answer,” commanded Abbess Junketsu-in.
“I would obey,” Midori said, hoping she’d chosen the lesser of two evils.
“Would you obey even if it meant hurting someone?” Kumashiro said.
Hurting them how? Midori wondered in frantic confusion, but she was afraid to ask. Maybe saying no now would make her earlier replies seem untruthful. “Yes,” she said uncertainly.
She longed for some indication of how well she’d done so far, but none came. Junketsu-in took up the questioning. “Are you close to your parents?”
Filial piety required that Midori profess loving devotion to the parents she’d supposedly left, and regret for refusing to marry the man they’d chosen for her. She thought that was the correct response. But her real mother had died long ago; her father, Lord Niu, spent most of his time on his provincial estate, and Midori rarely saw him. If she lied, her interrogators might guess.
“No,” she said, reluctantly opting for the truth.
The expressions of the assembly remained neutral. “If your parents should need your assistance, would you feel obliged to return home?” Abbess Junketsu-in said.
Lord Niu suffered from madness, and Midori couldn’t imagine anything she could do for him. She said,”No,” ashamed to appear such an undutiful daughter.
“Have you any brothers or sisters you would miss if you entered the nunnery?” Junketsu-in said.
Midori thought sadly of the older sister murdered, the brother slain after committing treason, and other sisters married and living far away. She couldn’t miss them any more than she already did. “No,” she said.
“What about friends?”
“No,” Midori said. Hopefully, she wouldn’t be away from Hirata and Reiko long enough to miss them.
“Suppose that you were all alone, with no place to live and no way to earn your rice,” Junketsu-in said. “Then suppose that someone rescued you, sheltered and fed you. How would you feel toward them?”
“I would feel most grateful,” Midori said honestly. When her stepmother had banished her from Edo, other members of the family had lacked the power or inclination to help Midori, but Sōsakan Sano had brought her back and gotten her a position in Lady Keisho-in’s retinue. She would be forever thankful to him, and to Reiko for befriending her.
“How would you repay the favor?”
“I would do whatever I could for them when they needed me.” After all, helping Reiko was one reason Midori had come here.
“Would you love them?” Junketsu-in said.
“Yes,” Midori said. Sano and Reiko were like family, and she did love them.
“If you’d come to love someone, would you give your life for them?”
“Yes,” Midori said with conviction. Honor required such loyal self-sacrifice. And Midori had often dreamed of dying heroically for Hirata.
The impassive façades of the people around her didn’t alter, but she sensed moods shifting and the faint draft of breaths simultaneously expelled, as if they’d reached some decision. Hope and dread leapt in Midori. Had she passed or failed the test?
Oh, she knew she’d failed! They were going to say they didn’t want her. Now she couldn’t even hang around the temple and watch what happened, because the Black Lotus would wonder why she’d stayed. Midori was dying to go home, but she couldn’t bear to have Reiko learn that she’d broken a promise and hadn’t even learned anything about the sect. She couldn’t face Hirata without hope of winning his heart.
“Come with me,” said Abbess Junketsu-in. “You shall begin training as a novice in the convent immediately.”
Midori gaped in stunned delight. She was in! She bowed to Kumashiro, Junketsu-in, and Dr. Miwa, exclaiming, “Thank you, thank you!”
As Junketsu-in led her away, Midori eagerly anticipated spying on the sect and impressing Reiko and Hirata. She hoped her new friend Toshiko had also been accepted as a novice.
23
He who denounces the Black Lotus
Will be buried beneath stones,
And spend an eternity in hell.
– FROM THE BLACK LOTUS SUTRA
Seated in his office, Sano planned out Haru’s trial. He had begun drafting the speech he would make to explain the evidence against the girl, and meant to work until it was time for him to meet with Minister Fugatami and the Council of Elders, when Hirata entered.
“There’s a disturbance in Nihonbashi,” Hirata said. “A mob of citizens is at war with the Black Lotus sect.”
Alarmed, Sano rode to Nihonbashi immediately with Hirata and a squadron of detectives. Crashing noises and angry shouts rang out over the rooftops. Peasants fled the area, while mounted troops galloped toward the site of the unrest. Smoke billowed into the blue sky. Arriving in a neighborhood of carpentry workshops, Sano watched from astride his horse as male commoners wielded clubs, iron poles, and shafts of lumber against saffron-robed priests. The priests defended themselves with staffs or bare hands. Shrieking housewives beat brooms on the backs of nuns.
“Down with the Black Lotus!” shouted the commoners.
An answering refrain arose from the priests, nuns, and an army of peasant followers who fought back: “Praise the glory of the Black Lotus! Stop the persecution of innocents!”
Cries of, “Thugs! Criminals! Murderers!” came from both sides.
The narrow streets were a dense maelstrom of darting, swinging figures. Children and old folk stood on balconies, hurling rocks on priests. Doshin waded through the mob, separating combatants and herding them away. Flames and smoke poured from a storefront. The fire brigade threw buckets of water on the blaze.
“Merciful gods,” Hirata said. “This will destroy the city if it doesn’t stop soon.”
Near Sano, a mounted, armor-clad police commander yelled orders to his men. Sano recognized him as a former colleague. “Yoriki Fukida,” he called. “How did this happen?”
The commander turned, shouting, “When the nuns and priests came begging in the neighborhood this morning, some carpenters attacked them. The fight turned into a mass brawl. The crowd set fire to the Black Lotus’s building.”
“Where are the carpenters now?”
“Over there. “ The commander pointed down the street.
Sano led his party in the direction indicated. Outside the gate at the intersection, a doshin and assistants stood guard over four dirty, bruised men who lay on the ground, their wrists and ankles shackled. Sano and Hirata dismounted. As Hirata looked the prisoners over, his gaze settled on one with down-turned eyes and mouth.
“Jiro-san,” he said in surprised recognition. “You started the brawl?” The man groaned. Hirata said to Sano, “He’s the husband of the murdered woman Chie.”
Walking up to the carpenter, Sano smelled a strong odor of alcohoclass="underline" Jiro was drunk. “Why did you attack the nuns and priests?” Sano said.
“Took my wife,” Jiro mumbled. “Killed her.”
“What about the rest of you?” Hirata asked the other prisoners.