“So it’s best not to … well…” Reiko couldn’t tell Masahiro not to have sex until he was married. That went against custom; men behaved as they pleased. “You shouldn’t be with too many girls or do it too often.”
Masahiro set the toy soldier carefully on the table. The blush had crept down his neck. Reiko wished she’d never brought Okaru into their home.
“There’s something else I have to tell you,” Reiko said. “Sometimes a girl will take advantage of a boy. She may pretend to like him, and-and do things with him, so he’ll give her money or presents.” That was how prostitutes hooked patrons, Reiko had heard. “But she doesn’t really care about him; she’s just using him. You must be careful, because your family is rich, and a girl might think she can get-”
“Stop! Be quiet!” Masahiro turned on Reiko, his eyes hot with temper.
“Masahiro!” She was shocked because he’d never spoken to her so rudely.
“It wasn’t like that!” he yelled.
“Then what-?”
He flung out his hand, swept the toy soldiers off the table, and jumped to his feet. “I don’t want to talk about it. Leave me alone!” He ran from the room.
Reiko sat for a moment, incredulous and bewildered. Then, hearing men’s voices, she drew a deep breath, rose, and went to greet Sano in the corridor.
“I just met a messenger from your father’s house,” Sano said. “He says your father is still unconscious; there’s no change in his condition.”
Reiko’s fear for her father worsened. “What if he doesn’t recover?”
“Don’t worry. He will.” Sano said, “Are the children all right?”
“I’m afraid Masahiro is upset with me.” Reiko explained.
Sano smiled ruefully. “I suppose we should have been prepared for this sort of thing. Shall I talk to him?”
“Let’s give him some time to calm down,” Reiko said. “Have you arrested Kajikawa?”
“Not yet.” Sano explained that the castle keeper had gone on the run. “I’ve got search parties looking for him. He won’t get far.”
35
The search went on through the night. Sano stopped to visit the supreme court judges, who had temporary quarters in the palace. He relayed the new testimony from Oishi, Ukihashi, and Lady Asano. The judges were gratified to know the true story behind the vendetta but were more at a loss for a verdict than ever.
“Why does the truth have to be so complicated?” Inspector General Nakae said.
“We’ll probably still be deliberating in a month,” Superintendent Ogiwara said.
They began to argue about the new evidence. Sano resumed the search for Kajikawa. As he and Detectives Marume and Fukida rode through Edo Castle, a hard, driving rain began to fall. The air grew so cold that the rain froze. Passages turned slick and treacherous. The horses’ hooves skidded. Patrol guards clung to the walls for support. Brass lanterns at checkpoints dripped icicles. Near midnight, in the courtyard just inside the main gate, Sano and his detectives met up with the party he’d sent to Kajikawa’s house.
“He’s not there,” the leader said. “He left for work as usual this morning, and his wife and servants haven’t seen him since.”
The Edo Castle guard captain came riding up through the rain that streamed down in liquid silver lines. “I’ve checked with all the sentries. Kajikawa hasn’t gone out through any of the gates. He’s still inside the castle.”
“How can he have evaded the search parties for so long?” Marume asked.
“There are many hiding places here,” the guard captain said, “and a keeper of the castle knows them all.”
“Fetch the other keepers,” Sano ordered. “Have them show you their secret spots.”
When dawn came, Kajikawa was still missing. The rain stopped. Sano, Marume, and Fukida climbed to the top of a guard tower and looked out at an unearthly sight. Every wall, pavement, roof, and tree inside the castle was glazed with a translucent coat of ice. Snow had frozen solid. The passages and grounds were deserted except for the search parties; everyone else stayed indoors rather than risk breaking their necks. Below the gray sky, the buildings in the city gleamed. Nothing moved there. The scene was spectrally, frighteningly beautiful.
“I think this is the end of the world,” Marume said.
Sano heard his name called. He looked up. Hirata was leaning out the window of a tower higher on the hill, waving. He called, “Kajikawa has been sighted!”
* * *
Breakfast at Sano’s estate was a tense affair. Akiko chattered gaily to Chiyo, but Masahiro glowered as he shoveled noodles into his mouth. Reiko toyed with her food and listened to the frozen trees rattle outside. As soon as Masahiro finished eating, he rose, said, “I have to wait on the shogun,” and stomped out the door.
Reiko sighed. Chiyo gave Reiko a questioning look.
“He’s cross because of what happened yesterday,” Reiko said. “I caught him with Okaru. Now I understand what you were trying to tell me. I’m sorry I was so dense.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t speak more plainly,” Chiyo said with sad regret. “Did they…?”
“I was afraid to ask. And Masahiro won’t talk to me. I handled the situation badly.”
“He won’t stay angry.” Chiyo soothed her. “Everything will be fine.”
But Reiko’s concern for Masahiro persisted. The thought of Okaru, locked in the servants’ quarters, made her conscience uneasy. The trees rattling sounded like fingernails tapping on a door, someone trying to get out. Reiko worried about her father, whom she couldn’t visit today. The cold air sank into her spirit, along with a sense of foreboding.
* * *
“Kajikawa was seen near the palace and at the Momijiyama within the past hour,” Hirata said.
“You take the Momijiyama,” Sano said.
He and Marume and Fukida sped to the palace. Icicles hung from the eaves like jagged teeth. Pines wore heavy, grotesque swags of ice. Dismounting outside the main door, Sano called to the sentry, “Where is Kajikawa?”
The sentry gestured. “In the back garden.”
Sliding on the hard, smooth snow, Sano and his men hurried around the palace. The bridge over the frozen pond and the pavilion in the middle seemed sculpted from ice. Trees clattered in the wind. Ice shards tinkled on the ground. A guard pointed at the latticework that enclosed the space beneath the palace’s foundation and said, “We chased Kajikawa under there.” A panel of lattice had been removed and thrown aside. A dark hole gaped. From it came scuffling and yelling.
“Some of the troops went in after Kajikawa,” the guard said. “Some ran around the building to try to catch him when he comes out.”
“He could come out inside the palace,” Sano said. Its floor was riddled with openings. “Is anybody watching for him there?”
The guard’s chagrined expression said nobody had thought of that. Sano and his men stampeded through the door. They ran off in separate directions along the corridors. Sano flung open doors, surprising a few officials who’d shown up for work. None had seen the fugitive. Sano heard thumps as the searchers groped their way through the palace’s underbelly. He sped along a covered corridor that joined two wings of the building. At the end was a door, decorated with gold Tokugawa crests, that led to the shogun’s chambers.
Premonition made Sano’s heart drop.
He tried the door, which was locked from the inside. He kicked the wooden panels until the door caved in. Stale, overheated air that smelled of smoke and medicines wafted out. As Sano raced down passages lined with movable wall panels, he heard shouts and whimpering. He halted at the threshold of the shogun’s private sitting room.
Inside, amid clouds of smoke, servants exclaimed and coughed as they beat brooms at flames that spread across the tatami. An overturned brazier had spewed hot charcoal around a large, square hole in the floor. People shrank against the walls. Sano pushed past the servants, treading over cinders and ash. He stopped near a low platform backed by a mural of white cranes and a red sun. Four men occupied the platform, like actors onstage who were so intent on their drama that they didn’t notice that the theater was on fire.