But the priests and nuns continued attacking. More cries of praise arose from the defeated. They seemed like mindless puppets sacrificing their lives to defend their leader’s territory. Still, their sheer numbers overwhelmed Sano’s forces. Each samurai battled multiple attackers.
Several soldiers lay dead, trampled by the mob. New legions of armed nuns and priests poured from buildings to replace those killed. Blades jabbed and clubs pounded at Sano, and he cut down more sect members as his horse plowed a path to the palanquin. Then he noticed nuns and priests moving toward the gate. Some carried only weapons or torches, but others lugged bulky bundles on their backs.
Sano realized that his arrival at the temple had set in motion the Black Lotus’s deadly scheme. The members were heading off to attack the city.
“Stop them!” Sano yelled to his troops. “Don’t let them out of the temple!”
“Merciful gods,” Reiko said, horror-stricken as she gazed through the palanquin’s window at the battle outside.
“See? I told you the truth,” Haru said eagerly. “Now can you believe what I say?”
The bearers had set down the palanquin, which now sat stranded on the ground, its thin walls offering scant protection from the horde. Reiko relived the terror of the ambush in Nihonbashi, yet this was far more serious. The troops formed a protective circle around the palanquin, but the nuns and priests fought them ruthlessly. Reiko and Haru were sitting targets for savagery.
“If you knew this would happen, then why didn’t you say so before we left town?” Reiko demanded of Haru.
The girl shook her head in chagrin.
“We could have brought more troops,” Reiko said, “but now it’s too late. And do you know what I think?” She grabbed the front of Haru’s robe, yanked the girl close, and shouted, “You didn’t really know what would happen. You’re just trying to turn circumstances to your own advantage.”
Then a disturbing alternative occurred to Reiko. “No. You knew, and you wanted us to come and be killed!”
She let go of Haru and peered out the window, looking for Sano. She heard him shouting, but she couldn’t see him in the chaos of darting figures. Blood-spattered corpses lay strewn across the ground, mostly Black Lotus, but some samurai; horses ran free, their saddles empty. Fires smoked in the grass, ignited by fallen torches.
“High Priest Anraku’s day of destiny is here,” Haru said in a wondering, exultant voice.
As fear for her husband’s life chilled Reiko, she became aware of a compelling need to set things right with Sano. She loved him and desperately wanted him to love her again. The thought of them dying estranged from each other tore at her heart. She longed to help him fight the Black Lotus, but she’d promised to watch over Haru.
A gang of nuns broke through the defense and stormed the palanquin, their faces contorted in maniacal fury. Shrieking, they beat clubs against the vehicle. Some grabbed the poles and rocked the palanquin, throwing Reiko and Haru from side to side. Others thrust spears through the window. Haru screamed. Reiko drew the dagger strapped to her arm and struck at the blades. Soldiers closed in, slashing at the nuns. Reiko saw women release their spears as their eyes went blank and they fell away from the window. But one nun lunged through the window, snarling and clawing.
Reiko struck out with her dagger and gashed the nun’s throat. Warm, thick blood spurted on Reiko. She cried out as the dead nun collapsed across her legs. Then she heard the palanquin’s door open. Turning, she saw Haru scramble out.
“Haru!” Reiko called in alarm.
She grabbed for the girl, but missed. Thoughts raced through her mind: If Haru got away, Sano would never forgive Reiko. In a flash, she was out of the palanquin.
35
Follow me, and I will lead you
Out of the wilderness of illusion
To the place where you can attain wisdom.
– FROM THE BLACK LOTUS SUTRA
Reiko cast a frantic glance around the precinct and saw Haru scurrying through the battle. Small and unobtrusive, the girl dodged fighters who took no notice of her. Reiko sped off in pursuit, shouting, “Stop, Haru!”
Haru kept going. A screaming nun charged at Reiko, swinging a club. Reiko lashed out with her dagger and cut the nun across the abdomen. More nuns chased Reiko. She saw Sano, astride his horse, battling four priests.
“Haru has escaped,” Reiko called to him. “I’m going after her.”
But Sano didn’t even look toward Reiko: He couldn’t hear her over the noise. The deranged nuns chased her away from him. A mob of priests and mounted troops blocked her path, and by the time she’d detoured around them, she’d shaken off the nuns, but lost Haru. Then she spotted the girl running into a thicket of trees at the north side of the temple. Reiko hurried toward her.
This area was deserted. The dense foliage screened out the battle noises and the light from the buildings. Reiko saw her quarry’s shadowy figure race down a gravel path and disappear beneath an arbor. She followed through the leafy tunnel and emerged into open space. Before her loomed the abbot’s two-story residence. Reiko halted, gasping in exertion and anxiety. Haru was nowhere in sight, but the door to the residence stood ajar.
Reiko raced up the steps. She hesitated at the door, fearing that there were Black Lotus members inside. Emboldened by her determination to catch Haru, she slipped through the door. Beyond the entryway, a corridor encircled the building’s interior, which was dark except for a dim glow visible through openings in the partitions that divided the rooms. Listening, she perceived wheezes coming from the direction of the light: Haru was there. Reiko groped her way through the chambers.
The light was a lamp that shone through a paper wall. The wheezes were louder now, accompanied by the scrape of something heavy against the floor. Then came scuffling noises, and creaks. Reiko looked into a room that was empty except for a cabinet, a lacquer chest, and a table upon which the oil lamp burned, and quiet except for a hollow, rhythmic clattering noise.
“Haru?” Reiko said, puzzled because the girl had mysteriously vanished.
Then she noticed that the chest stood at an odd angle across the floor, and the shadow beside it wasn’t really a shadow, but a hole from which the clattering emanated. Dismaying realization struck her. Haru had moved the chest and gone through a secret entrance to the temple’s underground realm.
Moving to the edge of the hole, Reiko spied a ladder leading down to a dimly lit cavern. She considered and rejected the idea of fetching Sano. If the tunnels extended beyond the temple district as Pious Truth claimed, Haru could be far away before Reiko returned with help. Besides, it was Reiko’s fault that Haru had gotten away, and Reiko’s responsibility to get her back. Donning courage like an armor tunic over her fear, Reiko slipped her dagger into the scabbard strapped to her arm and descended.
She had an unsettling sense of the earth swallowing her. Her heart hammered, and a chill draft shivered her skin. The underground seemed alive, breathing pure malevolence. Reiko alighted in a junction of three tunnels. Drawing her dagger, she looked around, expecting to see a horde of armed nuns and priests, but no one appeared. The clattering pulsation accompanied rushes of air that wavered the flames in oil lamps on the walls. Haru’s wheezes and footsteps echoed from one branch of the tunnel.
In the temple precinct, Sano lashed his sword at the priests clamoring around him and his horse. “Get away!” he shouted, trying to clear a path to Reiko’s palanquin.
White-robed figures poured out the open gate, chased by soldiers. Wounded sect members gulped the contents of vials that hung on strings around their necks and expired in violent convulsions, having poisoned themselves to avoid capture. Though the grounds were covered with fallen priests and nuns, the temple yielded up a seemingly endless supply of new attackers. The fires caused by the torches had lit the shrubbery. Anraku’s conflagration had begun. Sano feared that his army wouldn’t be able to contain the violence, and he would fail in his duty to prevent the destruction of Edo.