The fall knocked the dagger out of her hand and the breath from her lungs. Midori lay stunned for a moment, heart pounding. Then she scrambled up, aware that she hadn’t thought what to do after escaping. Where should she go? Uncertainty immobilized her. She felt very small and alone and scared.
Now that her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, she saw that she was in a garden. Jagged pine trees stood out against the indigo sky, and a pond reflected the moon’s bleached circle. Midori smelled the odor of burnt wood and saw a large square of bare, charred earth. A chill tingled her skin. This must be where the cottage had been burned with Commander Oyama, the woman, and the little boy inside, and the debris cleared away.
Rapid footsteps rustled through fallen leaves, coming toward Midori. Panic ripped a gasp from her throat. She whirled, raising her hands to fend off the dark figure approaching her.
The person halted and whispered loudly, “It’s me!”
“Oh!” Midori went limp with relief as she recognized Toshiko. “I’m so glad to see you. How did you get here?”
“I told them I had cramps,” Toshiko said, “and then pretended to get better. After the lesson started up again, I sneaked away. So, what’s next?”
Before Midori could admit that she didn’t know, a creaking noise came from the site of the fire. They both started. Midori saw an eerie glow issuing from the burnt ground.
“It’s the ghosts of the people who died here!” she whispered as superstitious fright shot through her.
She and Toshiko hugged each other, cowering behind a tree. Up from the ground rose a hand, bearing a lantern; then an entire figure emerged. It was a woman dressed in a gray kimono and long white head drape: Abbess Junketsu-in. She held the lantern over a large hole out of which she’d climbed.
“That must be an opening to the underground tunnels Lady Reiko told me about,” Midori whispered to Toshiko. Apparently, it had once led into the cottage.
As they watched, there were more creaking sounds, and two male figures climbed from the hole. They had shaved crowns and wore swords. Midori recognized the crest of the Kuroda clan on their glossy silk robes. They and Junketsu-in walked away down a path toward the main precinct.
“Do you want to see what’s inside the hole?” Toshiko whispered.
Midori shuddered at the idea of going down there. “Let’s find out what the abbess and those men are doing.” Reiko would want to know why Junketsu-in had sneaked two high-ranking samurai from a powerful clan into the temple. “Come on!”
They followed the trio, creeping along behind the shrubs that bordered the path. The abbess led the samurai up the stairs to the veranda of a secondary worship hall. Dim light shone through the barred windows. Midori and Toshiko hid behind a prayer board outside and watched one samurai open the door.
“Not so fast,” Junketsu-in said irately. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
The men reached inside their kimonos, removed objects too small for Midori to see, and handed them to the abbess. Then the three vanished into the building.
Midori said to Toshiko, “We’ll listen at the windows.”
They scurried over to the base of the building and crouched in the shadows. Midori heard footsteps inside, and the scrape of doors sliding. Then a male voice said, “I’ll take her.” Another said, “That one will do for me.” Soon Junketsu-in exited the building, alone. She walked toward the main hall. Midori was torn between investigating the mysterious activities here, or spying on Junketsu-in. Afraid of the abbess, she decided to stay.
Low murmurs came through the window above; Midori couldn’t make out the words. Toshiko rose, poked her finger through the bars, pierced the paper pane, and gingerly tore a hole in it. While Midori watched, daunted by her boldness, Toshiko peered into the hole.
“Look!” she whispered excitedly.
After glancing around to make sure nobody was watching, Midori stood and looked through the hole. Inside were a nun and one of the samurai who’d come with Abbess Junketsu-in. The samurai had stripped nude. He was kneeling, while the nun hunched before him, sucking his organ. He groaned, caressing her shaved head. Midori gasped in shock.
Toshiko tugged her arm. “Let’s see what’s happening in the other rooms.”
They crept to the next window, where Toshiko tore another hole. In this room they saw a naked monk crouched on all fours. The other samurai knelt behind him, thrusting into his buttocks. Recalling the exchange she’d observed between Junketsu-in and the two samurai, Midori realized that the men had been paying for sexual services and choosing their companions. The temple was running a brothel for rich patrons.
“Have you seen enough?” Toshiko whispered. “Can we leave?”
Midori would have liked nothing better than to flee the temple, but she doubted that Reiko or Hirata would think much of what she’d learned so far. Prostitution outside the Yoshiwara licensed district was a crime, but it revealed nothing about the murders or the Black Lotus’s plans.
“We can’t go yet,” Midori told Toshiko. “Come this way!”
They stole through the grounds, back to the site of the burned cottage. Crouching at the edge of the hole, they peered inside. Midori saw a shaft with plank walls; a wooden ladder extended down one side into a deep pit. Dim light shone at the bottom, and she heard a distant clattering noise.
“There’s something in there. It’s dark,” Toshiko whimpered. “I’m afraid to go down.”
So was Midori, but she must be brave. “You can wait for me here,” she said with more confidence than she felt.
“But I’m afraid to be alone.”
“Then you’ll have to come with me.”
Midori began climbing down the creaky ladder. The dark shaft enclosed her. As she descended, the air grew cooler and damper, exuding the odor of soil. A panicky, trapped feeling built inside Midori. She gripped the sides of the ladder and her feet fumbled for the rungs while she imagined hands reaching up from the darkness to grab her. Reaching the bottom, she found herself in a cave. The light came from oil lamps mounted on the reinforced walls of three tunnels that joined where she stood. A moment later, Toshiko came scrambling down the ladder.
Having her friend by her side renewed Midori’s courage. “This way,” she said, picking a direction at random.
Treading softly upon the earth floor, they started down a tunnel. The steady beat of the clattering noise echoed around them. Air gusted from holes in the ceiling, and a strong odor of fish and pickled radishes permeated the atmosphere. Rooms lined the tunnel. Midori peeked through the open doorway of one and saw ceramic urns stacked to the ceiling. The next rooms contained rice bales, and the next, water barrels.
“These must be the provisions we saw them bringing into the temple,” Midori said. The cool temperature would preserve the food, but she didn’t understand why the sect would amass so much, or bother hauling water underground.
Toshiko gazed down the tunnel, her eyes alert and frighted. “Someone’s coming!”
Midori heard the footsteps in the distance. She ducked into the room containing the water barrels, pulling Toshiko with her. They watched six priests march by. After the group passed, they started down the tunnel again.
“Where are we going?” Toshiko whispered.
“I guess we’ll follow the noise.”
This grew louder as they wound deeper into the subterranean complex. They passed more pantries, rooms lined with mattresses set on wide shelves, and junctions where the tunnel branched. At one junction, a shaft rose to ground level. Four nuns came down its ladder. Midori and Toshiko leapt back into the tunnel just in time to hide.