‘Your turn now,’ Tora said. ‘What about her family?’
She took up her sewing again and gestured to the cushion. ‘My lady’s mother was born into a good family, but she was only a concubine in her husband’s house,’ she said. ‘She gave her husband a son and a daughter before she died. But when my lady’s father also died, the oldest son drove us away. My lady’s brother left, and we never heard of him again. My lady and I came here. What else were we to do, two women alone?’
Tora raised his brows. ‘You turned a little lady into a working girl?’
Anger flared. ‘I made sure she could earn a living by her beauty and talent. She was never a common prostitute. Peony had all the great lords at her feet. Lord Sadanori wanted to make her his wife.’
‘Are you serious?’
She nodded. ‘I talked and talked until I lost my voice, but she was in love with young Masuda. She could’ve had servants and fine gowns. She could’ve been again what she once was. Sadanori was mad about her. He settled us in a fine house until new quarters could be built for her at his mansion. He spoiled her with gifts. Life was good, but she wasn’t happy. One morning she made me pack her things and hire a sedan chair. She ran away to become a kept woman instead of a wife! And then not even that. When he died, his people left her to starve.’
As Tora followed the story, a niggling suspicion arose. Mrs Yozaemon had called the lost boy ‘Nori’. Nori -Sadanori. He asked, ‘Whose child was the boy? Sadanori’s or young Masuda’s?’
She glared. ‘What does it matter?’
Tora smelled a rat. ‘It matters to the boy.’
‘No. He only had his mother and me. And I’m too poor and too old to raise a small child, but I will if this child turns out to be hers.’
As a courtesan, Peony might have slept with many men, regardless of her nurse’s assertions. There was a good chance that her child was neither man’s. ‘What about her family? They might want him.’
She hesitated just a moment too long before saying, ‘No.’
‘What do you mean? What was her father’s name? Her mother’s? How can there be nobody?’
Her anger flared up again. ‘She was nobody to them because her mother was an Ezo chieftain’s daughter.’
‘Oh.’ The Ezo were the barbarians of the north. They were treated like outcasts. Tora looked on Little Abbess with kindlier eyes. The woman had been a devoted nurse and had followed her charge into destitution. ‘Why are you so sure she killed herself? Couldn’t somebody have drowned her?’
She looked startled, then shook her head. ‘When the man she loved had died, what else could she do, poor little bird? There was no going back to her old life. She tried for more than a year. I saw her poor body. She was so thin.’ She started to weep again. ‘I used to take her what I could scrape together: a few coppers, some food, little treats, clothes for the boy. But it wasn’t enough.’
‘It must’ve been bad, finding her dead.’
She nodded. ‘I blame myself. I was too lazy, and one of the boy’s jackets wasn’t done. Such foolishness! If I’d left a day before, it wouldn’t have happened.’ She dabbed at her wet and puffy face. ‘And when she’d sent for me.’
‘She sent for you?’
‘She wanted me to come back to her.’
‘You’re sure the message was from her?’
‘Yes. Who else would’ve written such a thing?’
Tora did not know, but had a notion that Peony’s message was somehow important. ‘Did she say why she wanted you back?’ She shook her head. ‘She didn’t mention Sadanori? Or the child?’ She shook her head again. Tora bit his lip. ‘If she was starving, I don’t see how she expected to feed you.’
‘I thought she’d come into some money, that maybe the old lord had finally seen fit to take care of them as he should’ve in the first place. More fool me!’
Tora got up with a sigh. ‘Thanks for your help.’
She nodded. ‘You’re not such a bad guy. How’s Rikiju?’
The memory of that cough-racked figure returned. ‘Very sick. I left her some money and told her to send for a doctor.’
‘I’ll make sure she does. Poor Rikiju. At least my lady was spared that.’
It was what all the women of the quarter feared more than pain or violence: to lose their appeal to men and die alone and penniless in some slum hole. It looked more and more like Peony had taken the quick way out.
SEVENTEEN
After his second visit to the Masudas, Akitada debated talking to the warden again, but it was getting late. He had not eaten since that morning, and by the time he did, it would be dark. Besides, there was the problem of where he was to sleep. He rebelled against returning for a third time to the inn where he had been publicly humiliated, and where the fat innkeeper might well balk at admitting such a guest, even without a small boy victim in tow.
He settled the problem of food by stopping in the main restaurant in Otsu. It was busy, and he felt reasonably anonymous. He enjoyed the steamed dumplings with shrimp and yams, and then found a quiet backstreet lodging house.
Feeling pleasantly tired, he opened the doors to the garden to let in the cool breeze, and then lay down where he could look up at the starry sky.
He had much to mull over. Foremost, of course, was the servant’s shocking charge that Peony had poisoned young Masuda. The second lady, while not precisely charging Peony with murder, had hinted at the same thing. But improperly prepared warabi was an uncertain method of killing a healthy yoting male, no matter how much of it he ate.
Still, the idea of poison was troublesome. The Masuda ladies both had motives. They were the scorned wives. And Akitada had not liked the way Lady Kohime had glanced at the old lord’s dish while she had chattered about poisons. Everything about her suggested that she had been raised in the country, where they had a good knowledge of herbs and plants. The old man stood between her and her daughters and a very large fortune.
Still, if young Masuda had been poisoned, Dr Inabe would have known. He would certainly have reported a murder. Or would he? His friendship with the Masudas might have kept him silent.
The doctor’s room had contained shelves of stacked papers and books. Chances were the man had kept records of young Masuda’s illness. Perhaps he had even left notes about his postmortem findings on Peony. Akitada also wondered where the boy fitted into the tangled relationships and motives, but the child was no longer his only reason for searching for answers.
The stars were extraordinarily clear, as was the great river created by the God of the Sky to separate his daughter from her lover. What importance the Tanabata legend attached to bringing people together! He was suddenly overwhelmed by loneliness.
The stars blurred as his eyes moistened with self-pity. Ashamed, he fought the emotion. It was a long time before the hurt faded and he slept.
Akitada decided to share some of the information with the warden, but when he mentioned the servant’s story that young Masuda had been poisoned by Peony, Takechi became agitated.
‘Not a word of truth to it,’ he cried, waving his hands. ‘It’s their grief talking. That death hit them hard and so they have to blame it on someone. His Lordship went mad, and the old man is simple-minded and loyal to his master. If the old lord had not lost his mind, he’d have seen the truth in time and that tale would never have started.’
Akitada raised his brows. ‘So there’s gossip about it. I understood the servant and the second lady to say that young Masuda became ill at Peony’s house and that Dr Inabe was consulted?’
‘Young Masuda had the flux. A common enough ailment around here. People will drink or eat the wrong things.’
‘Like warabi shoots?’
‘ Warabi? The warden looked blank. ‘If it was, nobody mentioned it to me. Anyway, it wasn’t a police matter.’ They looked at each other, and the warden became anxious. ‘You don’t think this is connected to the doctor’s murder, do you?’