Shigeno received this promise with a snort of derision. “Forget it. He’ll have no chance against the Dazaifu. I bet he won’t even try. I’m fed up with officials. As for borrowing a boat, how will you accomplish that? Fishermen need their boats. They won’t let you have one without getting paid extremely well.”
He had a point, but Tora waved it aside. “We’ll think of something when we get there.”
To their surprise, they found a house very soon after this. It clearly belonged to a fisherman, because a sturdy boat with a mast lay on shore. Smoke curled from a kitchen shed next to the house.
Tora laughed. “Look, they are even cooking our dinner for us.” He started down the hill toward the house, Shigeno on his heels. They had covered half the distance when they heard the screams.
Tora cursed and started running, Shigeno at his heels. Somehow, they both guessed what was happening. Tora was the first to burst through the door of the small wooden house. The room was barely large enough for the three people it held, and Tora stumbled over the legs of an unconscious man on his way in.
The rest of the floor space was taken up by a woman and the convict Takeshi who was raping her. With one step, Tora reached him, seized him by his hair and pulled him off the woman. Then he hit him. Takeshi screamed. Blood spurted from his nose and trickled into his mouth.
“Here,” snarled Tora to Shigeno. “Tie up this bastard. He just lost his bid for freedom.”
He tried to help the woman up, but she scurried into a corner, looking at them fearfully. She was still young and not unattractive. The unconscious male on the floor was at least twenty years older. Apart from having been knocked out by the disgusting Takeshi, he seemed all right.
Tora sighed. “Well, that settles it. He’ll hardly agree to lend us his boat after this. We’ll have to borrow it without permission.”
Shigeno grinned. “Steal it, you mean?”
Tora turned to the woman. “Your father’s all right. He’ll come round in a little while. I’m sorry about what happened.”
She looked from him to the man on the floor. “My husband,” she whispered.
“Oh, sorry. I’m Tora, and my big friend is Shigeno. The other animal is called Takeshi. We were shipwrecked.”
She relaxed a little.
Tora asked her, “Where are we? I mean, what’s the name of this island?”
She giggled at the question. “Ishida.”
Tora grinned at Shigeno. “You were right. This isn’t Tsushima.”
She rolled her eyes. “No, not Tsushima.”
“Well, we need to borrow your boat. And maybe some food?”
The mention of food startled her into action. She jumped up, stepped over her husband with barely a glance, and ran to the kitchen shed.
Shigeno had found some rope and trussed up the unconscious Takeshi. “What shall we do with him? Leave him here?”
Tora considered. The fisherman looked sturdy enough, but he was short. “It would serve him right, but he might get loose and start all over again. No, he’s under arrest. We’ll take him back to Hakata and put him in jail.”
Shigeno snorted, but he followed Tora to the kitchen shed.
The young woman was stirring a large pot suspended over a charcoal fire. A wonderful smell came from it. Tora snatched up a couple of chipped bowls and held them out to her. “Please,” he begged. “We’re very hungry.”
She glanced at him, smiled briefly, then used a ladle to fill both bowls with the fish and vegetable stew.
They ate hungrily, sipping and slurping the food, burning their mouths, and shoveling in the rest with their fingers. She watched them.
“You can’t have the boat,” she finally announced. “My husband needs it for fishing.”
Tora returned his bowl and flashed her his best smile. “I know. I wish I had money to give you, but we have nothing. We need to take the boat to get back to Hakata. Afterward we’ll return it. With payment.”
She looked anxious. “Are there more men coming? Like that other one?”
Tora thought of the survivors they had left behind. It was very likely they would come this way. He eyed the fishing boat. It looked sturdy and large enough. “I tell you what,” he said, suddenly inspired. “We’ll take you and your husband and our prisoner with us. Your husband can handle the boat, and you’ll both be safe. In Hakata, we’ll pay you, and I’ll buy you the prettiest gown you can find.”
She looked toward the house. “My husband, is he really all right?”
“Let’s go see!”
The fisherman was already stirring when they got back. He was sitting up, holding his head in his hands. It took a while to explain to him. Fortunately, he did not know Takeshi had been raping his wife, and nobody told him. They apologized that their escaped prisoner had attacked him and proposed the boat journey.
The man’s wife said, “They’ll pay good. Fifty pieces of silver.” She shot Tora a sly glance.
“Fifty pieces of silver?” echoed the fisherman, looking stunned.
Tora nodded. “Fifty pieces of silver.”
28
Tora’s fate overshadowed everything else. Even though the discovery of Governor Tachibana’s body ranked as a political incident of the first order, Akitada did not travel to Dazaifu to report and receive instructions. Instead, he and Saburo stayed in Hakata to view Hiroshi’s corpse. The weather had turned cold and wet again, and the doll maker’s son had washed up in Hakata harbor. According to the coroner, he had been strangled.
Immediately afterward Akitada used Maeda’s office to dictate to Saburo a terse account of Tora’s presumed abduction and the recovery of the ex-governor’s corpse.
“Address it to Lord Fujiwara Korenori, Assistant Governor General, Dazaifu. The subject is ‘murder of Lord Tachibana Moroe.’ Write, ‘The body of His Excellency Lord Tachibana Moroe, was discovered today in an abandoned well in Hakata. I await further reports from the Hakata coroner, but it appears the former governor was murdered about a month ago, probably on the day of his intended departure for the capital. The case is being investigated by Lieutenant Maeda of the Hakata police force since all crimes are handled locally in Chikuzen province.
“I must also report the disappearance of my retainer, Lieutenant Sashima, known as Tora. Since he was investigating the disappearance of Lord Tachibana at the time, I shall pursue this matter with all the vigor at my disposal.’”
Akitada paused. Saburo cast a glance at his master and said, “I’ll have Maeda’s staff make copies for our files.”
Akitada nodded. “The usual superscription and conclusion. As soon as it’s written out and copies have been made, it is to be taken immediately to Dazaifu by a tribunal guardsman.”
“The assistant governor general won’t like it.”
“It’s the way the Dazaifu administration set up the system of law enforcement in the Kyushu provinces; let them live with it now.”
Akitada could well imagine that complaints about him would be dispatched to the court, but he did not care. He had made up his mind to ignore the assistant governor general until Tora was found. And Feng must have the answer.
He would deal differently with the merchant this time. On the last visit to the man’s house, Tora had been with him. They had both felt palpable danger there, and Feng had been much too sure of himself. Since then, Feng’s employees had been seen engaging in suspicious dealings with Hiroshi and with foreign ships docked in the harbor. Feng’s clerk had paid off Hiroshi, and Ling had been present when Feng had vented his anger on the clerk later. Akitada had already suspected the Chinese merchant of having had a hand in Tachibana’s murder, but most importantly, he was now his prime suspect in Tora’s disappearance.
He thought about what Tora and Saburo had reported to him during the past month. It had all begun with the murder of Mitsui’s wife. The Mitsuis were both doll makers, and her husband had confessed to killing her and had then committed suicide. Still unexplained was where and how Mrs. Mitsui had earned the five gold coins which had enraged her husband. The business with the dolls was also a puzzle. Why had the brute Ling stopped Akitada from buying or handling some of the dolls on the shelf? Something had been wrong with those dolls.