The shogun waved Sano away. “Your mother shall answer my question. Perhaps she is the one person in this entire country who will tell me the straight facts instead of talking in circles.” He turned to her. “Did you really say that my cousin set that fire?”
This time Sano’s mother showed no fear, didn’t cringe. “Yes,” she said with quiet conviction. “I saw him with my own eyes-exactly as you heard me tell my son.”
Sano suppressed a groan. That she’d accused a member of the Tokugawa clan of a capital crime! That she’d committed this act of treason to the shogun’s face! She seemed intent on using the truth to seal her doom.
“You saw him set the fire that burned the castle?” The shogun’s voice rose shrill and loud with appalled incredulity.
“Mother,” Sano said, “let me handle this.”
“Quiet!” the shogun ordered.
“Yes,” Sano’s mother said.
Sano despaired of trying to rescue her from herself. The shogun would call his guards to arrest her, Sano, and their whole family. Sano drew a breath to call his own guards. He braced himself for a fight.
The shogun sank to his knees. His assertiveness crumbled; his complexion turned pale, sickly. Sano was so disconcerted by his lord’s sudden change of mood that he exhaled and hesitated.
“I was in the castle during the Great Fire,” the shogun said in a tremulous, broken voice. “With my mother. We thought we would be safe, until the second day, when the fire started in Koishikawa. It came blazing up the hill.” He shrank into himself; his voice grew thinner and higher as he reverted to the scared little boy he’d been during the disaster.
“The wind blew the fire to the castle. We were in the middle of a sea of flames. They leaped the walls and burned the corridors on top. Then they were raging inside the castle. We hurried to the West Quarter, which was farthest away from the fire. We hid there while the rest of the castle burned.”
His gaze was clouded by the memory of that awful day, by his unforgotten terror. “If our soldiers hadn’t managed to put out the fire before it could reach the West Quarter, my mother and I would have perished.” Outrage cleared his eyes. “The fire that Tadatoshi set virtually destroyed my castle.” Thumping his palm against his chest, the shogun said, “He almost killed me!”
Astonishment struck Sano. The shogun had accepted his mother’s story as the truth. And he cared only about the part of the story that directly concerned himself. Recovering from his first shock, Sano realized that the shogun was behaving completely in character.
“Tadatoshi killed thousands of people,” Sano’s mother said.
The shogun made an impatient, dismissive gesture. “Because of him, I almost died! Even though I didn’t, I was frightened out of my wits!”
Sano’s mother frowned at his self-centeredness. Her lips parted, but Sano silenced her with a glance before she could rebuke the shogun as she had Sano when he’d behaved callously toward other people during his childhood. He floated a question as cautiously as if releasing a butterfly to test the wind.
“Do you understand why my mother and her friends had to kill Tadatoshi?”
“Yes, yes.” The shogun’s head bobbed. “He deserved to die for what he did to me.”
“And you understand that if they hadn’t killed him, he would have continued setting fires?” Sano drove his point into what the shogun would deem the heart of the matter. “His next one might have killed you.”
The shogun pursed his mouth. “Ahh, I hadn’t thought of that.” He sounded awed by his narrow escape. “But yes, you’re right.”
“So you might say that my mother not only punished an arsonist, but she saved your life,” Sano said.
“Yes, indeed!” the shogun exclaimed. Then he said, “What I don’t understand is Colonel Doi. Why did he say she, ahh, kidnapped Tadatoshi and murdered him for money? He knew what really happened to Tadatoshi because he was in on it. Why didn’t he, ahh, just tell me the truth?”
For the same reasons his mother hadn’t wanted to, Sano thought.
Their pledge, and their fear of punishment, had kept them both silent for forty-three years. Doi had counted on her to honor the pledge even after he’d accused her of murder. But that explanation didn’t best suit Sano’s purposes.
“Doi didn’t want anyone to know he was a coward who hesitated to kill an arsonist,” Sano said. “He didn’t want to admit that my mother, a mere girl, was the one brave and virtuous enough to do what needed to be done.”
Nodding, the shogun turned to her. “Yes, you were brave.” Admiration filled his voice. “In fact, you are a heroine!”
Sano’s mother looked mortified by the praise. She gave Sano a glance that said she disapproved of his manipulating the shogun but knew she was in no position to object. She knelt, bowed, and said humbly, “You’re too kind, Your Excellency.”
Sano pressed his advantage. “Will you pardon my mother?”
“Yes, of course.” The shogun declared, “I pronounce her innocent of all evildoing and set her free.”
The turn of events left Sano breathless. Just like that, his fortunes had changed. What part did it owe to the divine power of the truth, and what to the force of human selfishness?
But the shogun’s mood turned peevish. “Don’t be too relieved, Chamberlain Sano. Your mother is out of trouble, but you are still under suspicion in the, ahh, killing of the witness in my cousin’s murder case. Or had you forgotten?”
Sano hadn’t, although he’d hoped the shogun had. “I have news about that. The man who was murdered wasn’t Egen the tutor. He was an impostor.”
As Sano explained how the discovery had been made, his mother’s features went slack with astonishment. This was the first she’d heard of it; Sano hadn’t had a chance to tell her sooner. “He wasn’t Egen,” she whispered. “I should have known.”
“An actor, fancy that,” the shogun said. “But you still could have killed him.” He rose and pointed his finger at Sano. “And don’t try to wiggle out of trouble! I’m tired of people playing me for a fool!”
Sano eased out of the room, drawing the shogun with him. He saw that his mother was offended by the shogun’s treatment of him, and he didn’t want her to say something that would change the shogun’s mind about pardoning her. He ushered the shogun to the reception room.
“I beg you to let me prove my innocence,” Sano said. “With your permission, I’ll go and work on that now.”
“Permission denied!” The shogun clutched Sano’s sleeve. “I came to talk to you because I am, ahh, faced with a terrible crisis. You’re not going anywhere until you help me!”
“I’ll be glad to help,” Sano said. “What is this crisis?”
The shogun paced the room, frantic with worry. “Ever since I found out that Lord Matsudaira wants to take my place, people have been urging me to declare war on his whole branch of our clan. They think I should lead a battle not only to crush him for good, but to subjugate his sons, his other kin, and his thousands of retainers. They talk and argue and pressure me.” He clasped his hands over his ears. “They won’t stop!”
Sano wasn’t surprised. The samurai class had grown restless since the war between Lord Matsudaira and the former chamberlain Yanagisawa, a minor skirmish during a peace that had lasted almost a century. Civil war was the logical outcome of escalating political strife, and a ruler under threat must launch a defense. Although Sano dreaded what a war would do to Japan, battle-lust enflamed his samurai blood. He welcomed the chance for a showdown with his enemy. And he knew his duty.
“If you want to go to war with Lord Matsudaira’s people, you can count on my support,” Sano said.
“But I don’t want to! I don’t like fighting. All I want is to live in peace!” The shogun faced Sano with shoulders hunched and clasped hands extended. “What shall I do?”
“You could put Lord Matsudaira to death,” Sano said. “He’s a traitor; he’s already under arrest. Executing him is a logical next step. It would spare you the trouble of a war.” And spare Sano and his family more attacks from Lord Matsudaira.