“You can’t go home,” Keisho-in said to Lady Yanagisawa. “We’ve been kidnapped.” She peered quizzically into Lady Yanagisawa’s face. “Don’t you remember?”
Lady Yanagisawa frowned in bewilderment, shaking her head. “My apologies… I don’t understand what you’re saying.” She seemed oblivious to their surroundings; she ignored Midori, who moaned and wept across the room. As Reiko and Keisho-in regarded Lady Yanagisawa with speechless confusion, she repeated, “I must be going home now. Kikuko-chan needs me.”
“I’m sorry, but that’s not possible,” Reiko said gently.
She explained what had happened, but the words seemed not to penetrate Lady Yanagisawa’s mind. The woman laboriously clambered to her feet. Gripping the walls for support, she stumbled blindly around the room. “Kikuko-chan,” she called. “Where are you?”
“The shock has driven her mad,” Keisho-in said.
Reiko feared that Keisho-in was right. Perhaps Lady Yanagisawa was only suffering from the aftereffects of the opium; but perhaps her already unbalanced mind wanted to deny what had happened, and its refusal to face facts had tipped her over the edge of insanity.
“Where are you, Kikuko-chan?” Anxiety inflected Lady Yanagisawa’s voice. “Come to Mama.”
Reiko hurried to Lady Yanagisawa and put her arms around the woman. “Kikuko-chan is safe at home. Please sit and compose yourself. You’re not well.”
Lady Yanagisawa pulled away and continued searching the room. “Kikuko-chan!” she called with increasing urgency.
“We need help,” Lady Keisho-in said. She staggered to the door, banged on it, and yelled, “Hey! We’ve got sick people in here. I order you to bring a physician!”
The banging echoed through what seemed like a deep well of empty space. No reply came. Midori’s sobs rose in hysteria.
“I wish I’d never gone on the trip,” she cried. “I wish I were at home.”
“This is intolerable,” Keisho-in declared, her fear giving way to anger. “My head is killing me. I need my tobacco pipe. It’s cold in here. The dust irritates my lungs.” She coughed and wheezed. “That I, the shogun’s mother, should be treated like this is an outrage!” She kicked the door. “Whoever you are, let us out at once!”
“I want my baby to be all right,” Midori wailed between sobs. “I want Hirata-san.”
Responsibility for her companions fell to Reiko with the burdensome weight of an avalanche. Though ill and terrified herself, she said, “We must stay calm. Getting upset will only make matters worse.”
Lady Keisho-in turned a vexed scowl on Reiko. “You’re so good at solving mysteries. Find us a way out of this.”
But Reiko knew how much her past success had depended on weapons; freedom of movement; access to information; and the power of Sano, his detective corps, and the Tokugawa regime behind her. Here, unarmed and trapped, what could she do to save her friends?
Nevertheless, determination and duty compelled Reiko to try. “Please be patient. I’ll get us out,” she said, feigning confidence.
Keisho-in squatted, folded her arms, and waited; Midori’s tears subsided. Lady Yanagisawa turned in slow, giddy circles, her gaze darting deliriously. The lap and rush of waves pervaded the uneasy quiet. Reiko went to the door and pushed. Its thick, heavy wood didn’t yield; pressure only rattled the bars on the other side. Her hands probed for cracks in the door’s surface and around the edge, to no avail. She moved to the windows and discovered that the shutters were nailed closed. She inserted her fingers into the narrow gaps between the rough wooden slats and tried to pry them apart. This gained her nothing except splinters in her skin.
Lady Yanagisawa collapsed, forlorn and whimpering, in a corner. “I can’t find my little girl,” she said. “Where can she have gone?”
Reiko examined the walls and floor. Both were marred with holes and fissures, but none large enough for escape. The building seemed ancient, in disrepair, but solid. Soon Reiko was exhausted, panting, and sweaty despite the cold. She stood in the center of the room and gazed upward. The ceiling was twice as high as she was tall. Moonlight shone through crevices amid the rafters. Failure drained her energy; she sank to her knees.
A pitiful wail came from Midori: “What’s to become of us?”
Lady Keisho-in jumped up, trotted around the room, and pounded on the shutters. “Help!” she shouted. “Somebody help!”
“Don’t panic,” Reiko begged. “We must save our strength and ready our wits for when we get an opportunity to escape.”
“We’ll never escape,” Midori said as more sobs convulsed her. “We’ll all die!”
Her hysteria infected Keisho-in, who clawed the door with her fingernails. “I must leave this place now! I can’t stand this anymore!”
Though Reiko attempted to reason with and comfort her friends, they paid no attention.
“Hirata-san!” Midori called, as if her voice could carry across the distance to her husband.
Keisho-in hurled herself repeatedly against the door, uttering foul curses that revealed her peasant origin; Lady Yanagisawa whimpered. Reiko had never felt so useless. When news of the massacre and abduction reached Edo, the shogun would surely order Sano to investigate this serious crime. Here Reiko was at the center of what might be the biggest case of Sano’s career; but all her talent and experience mattered not, for this time she was a victim instead of a detective.
Frustration, physical malaise, and terror that she would never again see Sano or Masahiro nearly overwhelmed Reiko. Tears spilled from her eyes; yet her samurai spirit blazed with anger toward her kidnappers and spurned the notion of giving up without a fight. Somehow she must deliver herself and her friends to safety, and the criminals to justice.
“Hirata-san!” Midori called again and again.
Her friend’s desperation resonated through Reiko. As much as she craved action, there seemed nothing she could do at present except wait for whatever was to come.
5
At dawn, a sun like an immense drop of blood floated up from the eastern hills outside Edo and shimmered in the white haze that veiled the sky. The discordant peals of bells in temples called priests to morning rites and roused the townspeople from slumber. As birds shrilled in the trees within Edo Castle ’s stone walls, guards opened the massive ironclad gate. Out came Hirata with Detectives Fukida and Marume. Fukida was a brooding, serious samurai in his twenties; Marume, a decade older, had a jovial countenance and a powerful build. They and Hirata rode horses laden with saddlebags for their journey to the scene of the abduction. Disguised as rōnin, they wore old cotton robes, wide wicker hats, and no sign of their rank, in the hope that they could blend with other travelers and secretly track down the kidnappers.
Instead of following the main boulevard west to the Tōkaidō, Hirata led his men along a road into the daimyo district south of the castle. “One quick stop may save us a long search,” he said.
The heat of day vanquished night’s fleeting coolness as the city awakened to life. Mounted samurai thronged the wide avenue of daimyo estates, mansions surrounded by barracks constructed of white plaster walls decorated with black tiles. Porters delivered bales of rice and produce to feed thousands of daimyo clan members and retainers. Hirata, Marume, and Fukida dismounted outside an estate that numbered among the largest. The gate boasted red beams and a multitiered roof; a white banner above the portals bore a dragonfly crest. Hirata approached a sentry stationed in one of the twin guardhouses.
“Is Lord Niu home?” Hirata said.
The guard glanced at Hirata’s shabby garments, sneered, and said, “Who’s asking?” Then he did a double take as he recognized Hirata. He leapt to his feet and bowed. “My apologies. Yes, the Honorable Lord Niu is in.”
“I want to see him,” Hirata said in a voice tight with controlled anger.