It was an oxcart filled with water that streamed out of cracks in the bottom. Ropes tied to the yokes stretched under the heavy weight of two dead oxen. Decayed meat clung to the skeletons. The men let the whole mess drop on the bank. The spell broke. Panting, they collapsed. Sweat poured from Hirata. He and the others lay still, their eyes shut, their mouths open, swallowing rain to cool their parched throats.
“I hope General Otani has a good reason for putting us through that,” Tahara said.
“Maybe he’ll tell us what it is at the ritual tomorrow,” Kitano said.
Alarm snapped Hirata’s eyes open. He raised himself on his elbow. The other men sat up. He smelled the stench of the ox carcasses. “Another ritual? Tomorrow?”
“Yes,” Tahara said. “Something wrong?”
Hirata glanced at Deguchi. The priest was looking at him in naked horror. “No,” Hirata said, trying to sound unconcerned. “I’m just wondering why so soon.”
Tahara and Kitano didn’t catch Deguchi’s expression. Kitano said, “It’s time.”
Neither Hirata nor Deguchi could risk going into a trance. General Otani would know they’d banded together against him and Tahara and Kitano. He would kill them both. But they had to pretend to go along with Tahara and Kitano and not arouse their suspicion.
“All right,” Hirata said. Deguchi nodded. “When tomorrow?”
“The hour of the snake,” Tahara said.
“In the morning?” Hirata said, alarmed because he and Deguchi had less than a day to prepare for killing Tahara and Kitano.
“There’s no rule that says all rituals have to be done at night,” Tahara said.
“Let’s go back to town and have a drink,” Kitano said. He and Tahara stood.
Hirata glanced at Deguchi, then groaned and lay down again. “I’m not ready to move yet.” Deguchi lay down, too, shutting his eyes.
“See you tomorrow morning,” Kitano called as he and Tahara rode away on their horses.
Hirata and Deguchi waited until the sound of hoofbeats faded. They sat up and turned to each other. Deguchi raised his eyebrows, spread his palms, and opened his mouth in a mute demand: What are we going to do?
“We’ll kill them when they come for the ritual,” Hirata decided.
How?
They needed more than will or luck to kill Tahara and Kitano. Hirata dragged himself to his feet. “We’d better go make some preparations.”
* * *
The heir’s residence was a pile of blackened timbers, cracked roof tiles, and cinders drenched by the rain. Masahiro walked through the grounds, which were awash in sooty puddles. He smelled burned meat under the odor of smoke. He held his nose, trying not to throw up. He didn’t want to go where he’d seen the corpses of Yoshisato and the other men. But he must look for clues. This was the most important investigation ever, no time to be a sissy. Unless he and his mother found out who’d set the fire, his father would be convicted of arson and put to death.
Masahiro stopped at the edge of the wreckage. Despair crept through him. What clues could possibly not have burned up?
Three oxcarts rolled through the gate. Laborers jumped out of the carts as the drivers halted near the wreckage. They began picking up burned debris and tossing it into the carts. Masahiro hurried toward them, to tell them to wait until he finished searching for clues. Then two men came into the compound. They were high-ranking officers from the Tokugawa army, with elaborate armor and helmets. Masahiro instinctively knew they wouldn’t be pleased to find him snooping around. He scampered to a grove of pine trees and hid.
“What are we looking for?” said one of the officers.
“Evidence to use at Sano’s trial,” said his comrade.
They looked at the ruins, then at each other. “It seems hopeless,” the first man said. He had a squat body and thick jowls. Masahiro recognized him. His name was Okubo. He and his comrade were Yanagisawa’s friends.
“I agree, but we’d better go through the motions of searching.” The other man was named Kitami. His armor hung on his bony figure like hide on a skeleton. The features under his helmet were gaunt, pinched. “If we don’t, somebody might say the investigation wasn’t thorough enough and raise a stink.”
Masahiro was horrified. That his father’s fate depended on a lazy investigation by men who worked for Yanagisawa!
The laborers heaped the oxcarts with debris. Kitami said, “Let them do the dirty work. We’ll see if they turn up anything interesting.”
He and Okubo watched the laborers. Masahiro knew that if he interfered, they would only laugh at him and throw him out. He waited helplessly, trembling with rage.
Okubo coughed. “Ugh, the smell is making me sick.”
“Me, too,” Kitami said. “Let’s go stand over there.”
They headed straight for Masahiro’s hiding place. He scuttled backward, farther into the trees. He crouched behind the biggest one.
“Hey, what’s that?” Okubo said.
Masahiro thought he’d been spotted, but the men weren’t looking at him. Okubo pointed at something caught on a stub of branch that protruded from a pine tree. Kitami pulled it off, held it up, and said, “It looks like a fire hood.”
Masahiro saw that it was indeed a fire hood, made of pale leather, shaped like a cone with a blunt tip. It had a hole cut out for the eyes and a flap that tied over the nose and mouth with ribbons.
“Whoever was wearing it must have got caught on the tree and it came off,” Okubo said.
“It’s a woman’s,” Kitami said. “See the flowers.” He touched the pink cherry blossoms embossed in the leather.
Masahiro pictured flames licking at the heir’s residence while a woman dressed in a leather cape and flowered hood ran away through the trees. He saw the branch snag the hood and tear it off her head. His heart raced with excitement. Here was evidence that someone other than his father-a woman-had set the fire.
“What are we going to do with this?” Kitami asked. “Bring it to Chamberlain Yanagisawa?”
Okubo said, “It doesn’t belong to Sano. No man would wear this.”
The men looked at each other. Masahiro read their shared thought: Yanagisawa only wanted evidence that incriminated Sano.
Kitami carried the hood to an oxcart that was almost full of debris. He threw the hood in. Masahiro watched, dismayed, as the laborers dumped burned planks on top of it. The driver cracked his whip at the oxen. They began hauling the cart away. Masahiro wanted to run after the cart, but Kitami and Okubo stood between him and the gate through which it disappeared. He clenched his fists and jittered, silently begging them to leave. He had to get that hood. It was proof of his father’s innocence.
32
Sano paced the floor in his chamber. The wounds on his head and face hurt, and he was exhausted because he’d hardly slept last night, but he was too restless to lie down. The house felt like a cage that shrank with every passing hour. Whenever he left his chamber, his jailers followed him around. Now it was late afternoon. He hadn’t seen anybody else all day except the servants who brought his meals. He’d sent Detective Marume to find out how a fire could have been set in a heavily guarded section of the castle. He’d never felt so trapped, isolated, or powerless in his life.
Yoshisato’s murder was his biggest case, the one in which he had the most at stake, and he had to depend on his wife, his twelve-year-old son, and his chief retainer to solve it. He was alone with his hatred of the shogun, which preyed on him like wolf’s teeth gutting a live deer. His mutinous thoughts and desire for revenge multiplied. He dreaded his impending trial.
Marume came into the room, saying, “I tracked down the guards who were on duty around the heir’s residence last night. That’s three in the watchtower that overlooks the residence, three in the nearest checkpoint, and three on patrol. One of the watchtower guards is a friend of mine. He said they were called away from their posts.”