“I didn’t-” The spasm around Lady Nobuko’s eye tightened.
“Show her,” Reiko said.
Masahiro reached inside his kimono, whipped out the fire hood, and shook it in Lady Nobuko’s face. “This is yours. Yanagisawa’s men found it by the burned building.”
“It’s not mine.” Lady Nobuko spoke vehemently, but recognition opened her eye wider.
“Don’t lie to us!” Masahiro shouted. “You wore it while you set the fire, so you wouldn’t get burned. It got caught on a bush when you ran away.”
“No.” Shrinking from the hairpin, Lady Nobuko said to Reiko, “I didn’t set the fire. That’s the truth. If you’ll take that thing away, I’ll tell you what happened that night.”
Against her will, Reiko began to think she and Masahiro had been wrong about Lady Nobuko. Her intuition said so.
“Mother, don’t let her fool you,” Masahiro said.
Reiko shushed him. She retracted the hairpin slightly. “Tell me.”
Gasping, Lady Nobuko said, “The fire bells woke me up. My headache was terrible. I called Korika. She brought my medicine and put a wet cloth over my eyes. She was out of breath, as if she’d been running.” Lady Nobuko finished in a low, sorrowful voice, “She smelled like smoke. That hood isn’t mine. It’s Korika’s.”
“Korika set the fire, then.” Reiko wasn’t entirely surprised. The devoted lady-in-waiting had fulfilled her mistress’s wish for revenge on Yanagisawa.
“She’s just trying to shift the blame,” Masahiro scoffed.
“I don’t think so,” Reiko said, although reluctant to absolve Lady Nobuko. “Korika vouched that Lady Nobuko was at home when the fire started, but if Lady Nobuko was asleep, Korika hasn’t anyone to vouch for her. Korika could be guilty. Where is she?”
“She went to the privy,” Lady Nobuko said.
“Let’s hear what she has to say.” Reiko knew time was speeding by; every moment they remained in the castle increased the chances that she and Masahiro would be caught. But they needed the truth about Yoshisato’s murder and a valid confession that would leave no doubt in anyone’s mind that Sano was innocent. Reiko told Masahiro, “Get Korika.”
* * *
While the troops were busy taking Marume to the barracks and settling him down, Sano ran to his private chambers. He saw the bank of drawers pulled away from the wall. The floor panel lay by the hole that led to the space under the house. Reiko, Masahiro, Akiko, and Midori and her children were gone.
Sano let out his breath in relief that immediately gave way to apprehension. Would someone recognize them and stop them before they got out of the castle? Would the troops discover they were missing before they could leave town? Was anywhere safe from Yanagisawa’s long reach? Sano closed his mind to those questions. It was too late to stop the plan he’d set in action or feel ashamed because running away seemed cowardly. Sano told himself that this was like a warlord retreating from the battlefield to live and fight for his honor another day. For now he must conceal his family’s absence for as long as possible.
He fitted the panel over the hole in the floor. He shoved the bank of drawers over it just as he heard soldiers tramping toward him along the corridor.
“Be a good boy, Masahiro. Don’t cry, Reiko,” he said, as if his family were with him.
The troops moved on. Sano tore off his surcoat, kimono, and trousers. He pulled his white funeral garments and a hidden dagger out of a cabinet. He donned the garments, put his other clothes on over them, and strapped the dagger to his calf under his trousers. Then he knelt and prayed for his family’s safety. He hadn’t told Reiko and Masahiro that he didn’t think he could escape. But he’d let them think so; otherwise, they wouldn’t have left him. And he would try his best.
Moments dragged with painful slowness, as if each one drove a needle into Sano’s nerves. At last temple bells tolled the hour of the dragon. Shouts and thumps came from the barracks as his men started a riot, the diversion he’d told Marume to create. Sano heard troops hurrying to quell it, leaving the house. He jumped to his feet. As he pulled out the bank of drawers, there came a knock at the door. He shoved the drawers back in place.
“Sano-san, that nurse is here,” said Captain Onoda’s voice.
Sano couldn’t say he didn’t want to talk to her, not after he’d made a big production about his final request. Onoda would get suspicious, look in the room, and see that his family was gone.
“All right.” Sano opened the door just enough to slip through. He called over his shoulder, to his absent family, “I’ll be back soon,” and shut the door.
Captain Onoda led him to the reception room. The noise from the barracks got louder. Sano hoped his men would keep it up long enough. In the reception room, he sat stoically on the dais, the condemned man ready to tie up the loose ends of his life.
Troops brought in Namiji. She was dressed in white cotton robes; she must have planned to attend the funeral with Lord Tsunanori’s household. Her gloved hand held her white head drape over her face. She knelt on the floor in front of Sano. The troops and Onoda stood along the walls. Sano wanted them away from the house, so that he could sneak out after he talked with Namiji, but if he asked them to leave, they might decide to check on his family.
He said to the nurse, “I brought you here for you to confess that you infected Lady Tsuruhime with smallpox.”
Her eyes gleamed with fear and insolence. “I’m innocent,” she said in her husky voice. “I already told your wife.”
“You’re guilty. Don’t bother denying it.” Sano had spent a lifetime having lies poured into his ears. He was sick of people who tried to avoid the consequences of their actions.
“I didn’t-”
“You scrubbed her bed with a contaminated sheet.” Fear for his family and his need to join them drained Sano’s well of patience dry. From outside came the sound of crashes as the men in the barracks hurled wine jars out the windows. He’d never conducted an interview while under such pressure. “You thought nobody saw you. You were wrong.”
Namiji gasped, sucking the fabric of her drape against her mouth. But she was too smart to ask who’d seen her, to admit that she’d done just what Sano said she had.
“Stop wasting my time.” Sano couldn’t leave until he was finished with her. “Confess.”
“I won’t. Because I didn’t do it.” She knew that denial was her only recourse.
“We’ll see about that.” Sano rose and stepped off the dais.
The hand that wasn’t holding her drape over her face went up in self-defense. “You can’t touch me.”
“Why not?”
“Lord Tsunanori won’t stand for your hurting me.”
“Lord Tsunanori isn’t here.” Sano ordered, “Confess that you killed Lady Tsuruhime by giving her smallpox.”
“He’ll send somebody to rescue me.”
“Why would he bother?” His impatience growing by the moment, Sano was curious in spite of himself.
“Because he takes care of me.” Namiji spoke with smug confidence.
Sano’s anger toward the shogun was like a fire that burned anyone else in its path. It incinerated whatever pity he might have felt toward this pariah of a woman. She’d coughed on and mocked his pregnant wife. Hiding her face, hiding the truth that she was a murderess, she was obstructing justice and delaying his flight from a death sentence.
“Why would Lord Tsunanori take care of this?” Sano grabbed her scarf and yanked.
Namiji shrieked as if he were peeling off her skin. She hung onto the scarf, but he tore it away. She covered her face with her gloved hands. Sano seized them by the wrists, pulling them down. Her face was a mass of puckered, pitted, circular scars. They disfigured her nose, lips, and ears. Her hair was wispy, her scalp bald where scars had proliferated.
The troops groaned in revulsion. Sano didn’t hide his own reaction or temper his cruelty. Thrusting Namiji away from him, he said, “Have you never looked at yourself in the mirror? How can you think that your master would protect a woman as ugly as you?”