Had Sano managed to escape yet? Were Midori and the children on their way out of town? Anger toward Lady Nobuko displaced some of Reiko’s anxiety. “You did it again. You withheld information.” This time the consequences were more serious than ever. “Why didn’t you tell somebody about Korika?”
“I wasn’t sure she did it. Weren’t you listening when I said so?”
“I think you were sure enough. Why didn’t you come forward and testify at my husband’s trial? How could you sit back and let him be convicted?”
“Do you think Yanagisawa would have let me testify?” Lady Nobuko chuckled through her grimace of pain. “Even if he had, what would I have said? ‘My lady-in-waiting killed Yoshisato for me’? Yanagisawa wouldn’t believe I had no part in it. He’d have made it look as if you and your husband and son and I were all in league with Korika. He’d have burned us all to death.”
Although Reiko knew Yanagisawa would have done just that, she was bitter. “So you kept your mouth shut. You’d have let my family die while you lived happily ever after.”
“Wouldn’t you have done the same?” Lady Nobuko asked.
“I would try to save everyone who was innocent and deliver the guilty person to justice.”
Lady Nobuko smiled pityingly. “Young women are so idealistic until their own little necks are threatened.”
Masahiro ran into the room. “I can’t find Korika. She wasn’t in the privy.”
Surprise lifted the brow over Lady Nobuko’s good eye. “That’s where she said she was going. She said she would be right back.”
“Well, she’s not anywhere around here,” Masahiro said. “I looked. Everyone’s gone.”
“She must have come back while we were talking,” Reiko said. “She must have overheard.”
“Then she knows we know that she set the fire.” Masahiro exclaimed, “She ran away!”
“We have to catch her! We need her to confess that she murdered Yoshisato. The fire hood isn’t enough proof.” Reiko couldn’t expect Lady Nobuko to testify that it belonged to Korika and that Korika had come home on the night of the fire smelling of smoke. Lady Nobuko had already made it plain that she didn’t want to implicate herself in the crime.
“I’ll go after her.” Masahiro ran out of the room.
“Maybe a confession from Korika won’t be enough proof, either.” Lady Nobuko said acerbically, “Yanagisawa will dispute it for all he’s worth. He’ll make sure no one else believes she is guilty and not your husband.”
Reiko wouldn’t concede defeat. “It’s our only chance.”
* * *
The funeral procession advanced down Edo’s main street. Mounted troops cleared the way through the crowds of spectators. First in the cortege walked Kato Kinhide from the Council of Elders. He headed banner bearers and thousands of troops carrying white lanterns on poles, and servants carrying the cages of birds and the huge bouquets of lilies, irises, and peonies. Next came the priests, like an army uniformed in saffron robes and glittering brocade stoles. They thumped drums, beat gongs, rang bells, and banged cymbals while they chanted prayers. Chamberlain Yanagisawa, the designated chief mourner, walked alone. His expression was rigid as he held the funeral tablet, a wooden placard that bore Yoshisato’s name. Behind him, the pallbearers shouldered the poles of the bier that carried Yoshisato’s coffin inside the miniature mansion decorated with gold lotus flowers. Spectators crowded closer to see the bier. Troops riding alongside the procession pushed the crowd back as a fleet of palanquins followed. The palanquins contained the shogun, his mother, and other members of the Tokugawa and branch clans. Everyone else followed on foot-hundreds of officials, court ladies, and attendants. The procession stretched all the way back to Edo Castle, whose main gate discharged more white-robed mourners.
Sano hid among the mourners still filing down through the castle. They were minor officials and their attendants. Some wore white-painted wicker hats to shield them from the sun. Sano stole a hat and put it on his own head. He pushed through the crowd of people that clogged the passages from wall to wall. The guards at the checkpoints didn’t stop or search anyone. They didn’t recognize Sano. But even with the hat tipped over his face Sano noticed people eying him strangely as he squeezed past them. He reached the gate. Crossing the moat with the procession, he saw a gigantic throng in the avenue. People craned their necks to see the procession; men sat on other men’s shoulders; women held up their children. Beggars scrambled for coins that servants in the cortege tossed. Sano thought he could easily disappear into the crowd.
Before he stepped off the bridge, a stir rippled through the people behind him. He glanced backward, saw his guards pushing mourners out of their way as they ran. They yelled to the troops riding with the procession. “Sano has escaped! He’s somewhere in the procession. Catch him!”
The mounted troops nearest Sano lined up along both sides of the procession. To flee into the crowd, he would have to get past them. He stayed in the middle of the procession, with two men walking on either side of him, screening him from the troops. The men were palace officials he knew. Keeping his head down, he felt their gazes on him. He walked faster, hoping to outpace the troops.
They called to others along the route. The others also fell into line, continuous barricades that stretched as far as Sano could see. He heard a cry: “There he is!” A backward glance showed him the guards weaving through the mourners, gaining on him. They shouted his name, ordered him to stop.
Sano bolted. He had a lucky break in the daimyo district. Daimyo and their huge entourages streamed out of their gates. The part of the procession that was behind Sano had to stop and let them in. They separated his guards from him. People who couldn’t have heard the guards stared intently at his chest as he hurried past them. He glanced down at himself. His white robe was stained red with Captain Onoda’s blood.
Dismayed, Sano ran faster. The daimyo estates on either side of the avenue sealed him in. When he reached Nihonbashi, crowds at every intersection cut off his escape. He heard his name repeated throughout the procession, faintly at first, then louder. Troops squeezed through the narrow streets, alongside mourners who walked two abreast. Sano ran from pointing fingers while his name echoed above the priests’ distant chanting, drumming, and bells. Along the country road that led to Zōjō Temple, troops on horseback formed a moving cordon that flanked the procession, all on the lookout for Sano. He couldn’t break through it to hide in the forest. As his hope of escape died, he prayed that the hunt for him would buy his family extra time to flee.
The procession crossed the bridge over the Sakuragawa Canal. Ahead, the cordon accompanied the mourners along the main approach to the temple. Sano was a fish swimming up a narrow channel. All the troops had to do was wait for him to swim out the end and net him. All he could do was keep moving.
The temple’s two-story gate engulfed him in shadow for a moment as he passed under it. The bells, chanting, and drumming grew louder. Sano smelled sweet, pungent incense smoke. The procession wound around to the area of the temple that contained the Tokugawa mausoleum.
Entering through a black-lacquered gate emblazoned with gold Tokugawa crests and flanked by statues of guardian deities, Sano saw banners and lanterns waving on poles above the mourners’ heads. He was nearing the front of the cortege. The mausoleum entrance was a long, covered corridor raised on a stone foundation, roofed with tile, its windows covered with ornate latticework, its wooden walls decorated with carved flowers and painted brilliant red. A flight of stone steps led to the door, which was shaded by a heavy, curved roof supported on pillars encrusted with gold dragons. Beyond the corridor rose the lavishly decorated roofs of the tombs where past shoguns and important Tokugawa clan members were interred. Completely renovated since the earthquake, the mausoleum shone with unreal splendor, as if it inhabited a dimension between this world and the next.