She had to protect her daughter, no matter how her daughter felt about her. Reiko rose, marched up to Akiko, and grabbed her hand. “Midori-san, you’d better go,” Reiko said as she pulled the little girl toward the bed. “She has to get used to me sooner or later. It might as well be now.”
Akiko screamed and dragged her feet. Midori pressed her hands together below her lips, her eyes filled with concern. She knew about the assassins; Reiko had told her. “Maybe Akiko would be just as safe in the next room. If anybody comes near her, you’ll hear, and I can stay with her if you want.”
“So can I,” Masahiro said. He removed his sword from under the bed. Reiko had also told him about the assassination plot. “I’ll protect her.”
“No! You stay where you are!” Reiko ordered.
“I can guard her just as well if she’s in the next room,” Lieutenant Asukai said from the corridor.
“You stay out of this!” Reiko hardly knew which made her angrier-that Lord Matsudaira meant to kill her children, or that nobody would do what she said. She wrestled Akiko into the bed. Akiko flailed, shrieked, and kicked Reiko.
“Ouch!” Reiko shouted. “Hold still and be quiet, or I’m going to spank you!”
Akiko obeyed, but Reiko saw in Akiko’s eyes a fury that matched her own. That her child could feel such enmity toward her took her breath away. Then Akiko began to cry.
Reiko was so ashamed of threatening her child that tears filled her own eyes. But now that she had Akiko where she wanted, she wouldn’t give in. She lay down on the side of the bed and pulled the quilt over Akiko and herself. She set her jaw and endured Akiko’s sobs.
“The bed is big enough for one more. Can I stay?” Midori asked. “Maybe that will help her settle down.”
“All right.” Reiko didn’t know when Sano would be back, she could use help guarding the children, and Midori was the only person besides Lieutenant Asukai that Reiko could trust.
Midori blew out the flame in the lantern, then got in bed between Reiko and Akiko, a buffer separating them. They and Masahiro lay awake in the darkness.
Yoritomo’s trial took place in a makeshift courtroom in the palace. The doors between several chambers had been opened to create a space large enough for the horde of spectators. Men knelt on the floor, smoking pipes, facing the dais. There Sano sat, dressed in black ceremonial robes stamped with his flying-crane crest in gold. Surveying the crowd, he spotted prominent officials and daimyo. The announcements had done their work. Nobody who mattered was absent.
Below him, white sand had been spread on the floor to form a shirasu, symbol of truth. On a straw mat on the sand knelt Yoritomo, his wrists and ankles bound, his face dripping sweat. His head turned from side to side; his eyes pleaded for help.
None came from Sano’s troops stationed along the walls. None came from the audience, which included Yoritomo’s father’s enemies; they were eager to see the youth they considered an unhealthy influence on the shogun take a fall. If any man had objections to the trial, he didn’t voice them, for none came from the shogun. He knelt beside Hirata, on the far right side of the dais, lending his tacit approval to the proceedings. He looked frightened and bewildered yet resigned, like a child who’d been forced to swallow bad-tasting medicine.
“The first witness will come forward,” Sano said.
A man entered the room through a door near the dais. He knelt and bowed to Sano and the shogun. The audience leaned forward to see; men in the back craned their necks. He was a strapping young man in worn, faded clothes, a kerchief tied around his shaved head.
“State your name and position,” Sano ordered.
“Itami Senjuro,” the man said. “I’m a ronin.”
He wasn’t a ronin, and that wasn’t his real name. He was a gardener at Sano’s estate.
“Do you know the defendant?” Sano asked.
“Yes, Honorable Chamberlain,” Itami said.
Yoritomo regarded Itami, and Sano, with incredulous dismay.
“How do you know him?” Sano asked.
“He hired me and some other ronin to attack your soldiers.”
The audience stirred, excited by the news. Yoritomo cried, “I didn’t! That’s a lie!”
“Be quiet,” Sano ordered sternly. “You’ll have your turn to talk later.” He said to Itami, “When was this attack?”
“Last autumn.”
“Tell me what happened.”
Itami repeated the story Sano had instructed him to telclass="underline" “Yoritomo gave us guns. We hid in the woods along the highway. When your soldiers rode by, we shot them.”
Yoritomo was shaking his head, horrified because he realized the trial was rigged. Sano asked, “What else did Yoritomo give you besides guns?”
“He gave us clothes decorated with Lord Matsudaira’s crest,” Itami replied. “We wore them to the ambush.”
Whispers broke out among the audience. Sano saw heads leaning together, speculative glances exchanged. The atmosphere was thick with tobacco smoke, warm from body heat. “Why did he want you to wear Lord Matsudaira’s crest?” Sano asked.
“So that people who saw us would think Lord Matsudaira sent us,” Itami said.
“That will be all,” Sano said. “You’re dismissed.”
Itami bowed and left the room. Sano said, “I call the next witness.”
Through the door came another, older man, his nose misshapen and cheeks scarred from many fights. The tattoos on his thick, muscular arms provoked rumbling and hostile stares from the audience.
After the witness knelt and bowed, Sano said, “State your name and occupation.”
“Uhei,” the witness said in a coarse, sullen voice. “I’m a gangster.”
That actually was his name, and he actually was a gangster, whom Hirata had met and often arrested during his career as a police officer. Hirata had thought Uhei would add authenticity to the trial and threatened him with jail if he didn’t cooperate. Questioning by Sano revealed that Uhei, like the ronin, had been hired last autumn by Yoritomo.
“To do what?” Sano asked.
“To bomb Lord Matsudaira’s villa by the river,” Uhei replied.
His words set off low exclamations among the assembly. The shogun was as stiff and mute as a wooden puppet. Yoritomo gazed at Sano with eyes full of pain, devastated by Sano’s betrayal.
“What happened?” Sano steeled his heart against his onetime friend. Yoritomo was guilty by association if not deed. He knew it as well as Sano did. And the attacks on Sano and Lord Matsudaira weren’t his only crimes.
“I went to the villa with another man Yoritomo hired,” the gangster said. “He lit the bomb and threw it. I was the lookout. He was caught by Lord Matsudaira’s guards. I got away.” He sounded pleased by his fictional exploit.
“Whose crest did you wear on your clothes?” Sano asked.
“Yours.”
Confusion rippled through the audience. That Yoritomo, the shogun’s plaything, had apparently mounted attacks on two such powerful men was a shock to everyone. Sano was certain they would be more shocked if they knew what Yoritomo was really up to. Yanagisawa was undoubtedly calling the shots from behind the scenes, but he needed help from someone who could come and go freely, who had access to information. Yoritomo was his henchman and spy at court.
“Yoritomo wanted Lord Matsudaira to think I ordered the bombing?” Sano said.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” the gangster said. “He didn’t tell me.”
“Perhaps the next witness can shed some light on the matter,” Sano said.
The next witness was a young woman who minced into the courtroom on high-soled sandals. She caused exclamations and mutters from the audience. Her long hair draped her pink and orange floral kimono. Her pretty face was plastered with thick white rice powder and bright red rouge. She dimpled at the men, and Sano felt the heat in the room rise.
When he asked her to identify herself, she said, “My name is Kiku. I’m a maid at the Plum Blossom Teahouse.”