“Wake up, Lady Matsumae,” she ordered.
“Uh?” Lady Matsumae’s head jerked up. Her eyes snapped open.
She looked older without her makeup, her complexion sallow, mottled, and loose, her mouth pale and puffy. Hostility focused her bleary eyes. “What do you want?”
“To talk.”
“Well, I don’t want to,” Lady Matsumae said peevishly. “Go away.” She lay back, shut her eyes, and compressed her lips.
“I’m not leaving.” Reiko had ideas about what had happened to Lilac, and she had bones to pick with Lady Matsumae. She dipped her hand in the tub and splashed water in Lady Matsumae’s face.
23
Chieftain Awetok and Urahenka knelt on the dirt floor of an empty storehouse inside the castle. They were stripped to the waist, hands and ankles tied. Their fierce faces gleamed with sweat raised by a crackling wood fire whose flames gilded the thick hair on their bodies and cast their shadows toward Gizaemon, Lord Matsumae, and Captain Okimoto. Okimoto held a leather whip that bristled with metal barbs.
“This is your last chance,” Lord Matsumae said, shrill with manic excitement. “Admit you murdered Tekare.”
Gizaemon relayed the order to the natives in their language. Near the door, eight soldiers guarded Hirata and Sano. Hirata had never felt so helpless. If he tried to save the Ainu, the Matsumae folk wouldn’t punish just Sano but also Reiko and their other comrades. He watched with impotent rage as the chieftain and Urahenka spoke, denying the accusation.
“They say their trial by ordeal proves they’re innocent,” Gizaemon said.
Lord Matsumae laughed. “Let’s see if you can withstand my kind of ordeal!”
Okimoto cracked his whip, striking the chieftain and Urahenka across their chests. They held themselves rigid, jaws clenched. Bloody lash marks appeared on their skin. Sano wore the intense, somber expression that Hirata knew meant he was thinking hard, formulating and discarding strategies.
“What do you say now?” Lord Matsumae asked the natives. Each uttered denials. “Well, if you want to suffer, by all means do.”
Again the whip cracked. Again the natives stoically bore the punishment. Chieftain Awetok’s body was so tough with sinew and leathery skin that he looked as if he could endure the whipping indefinitely. But Urahenka was shivering; the sweat rolled down his face.
Tearful with frustration, Lord Matsumae hurled more accusations and demands for confessions at the natives. But Gizaemon had an air of enjoyment. Sano said to him, “You’re eager for them to confess, aren’t you?”
“You bet.” Gizaemon relished chewing a sassafras toothpick. “It’ll help my nephew, make him well again.”
“I think your reason is more personal than that,” Sano said. “If they confess, that lets you off the hook.”
Gizaemon glowered. “That’s enough from you.”
Sano persisted even though the troops pressed their spears into his coat: “Before Lilac died, she told my wife that she knew something about the murder.” He raised his voice above Lord Matsumae’s angry shouts. “Was it about you?”
Hirata understood what Sano was trying to do-draw suspicion away from the natives and focus it on Gizaemon. And he could tell that Gizaemon knew.
“Lilac seems to have had a habit of bartering information for favors,” Sano said. “But maybe you already know that, from personal experience.”
I’m warning you,“ Gizaemon said.
“Did she tell you that she saw you set the spring-bow trap for Tekare?” Hirata joined in. “Did she threaten to tell Chamberlain Sano unless you gave her money?”
Gizaemon didn’t answer, and Lord Matsumae was too busy ranting to hear the suggestion that his uncle could be the murderer. The natives continued to resist him until their torsos were crisscrossed with bloody lines punctuated by deeper wounds where the barbs had dug in. Both were breathing hard now, both in obvious pain. Hirata looked away in shame. He couldn’t bear to see the chieftain whipped to death while he stood by.
Suddenly the chieftain blurted an exclamation. “Wait,” Gizaemon told Okimoto, who’d raised the whip again. “He says he’s ready to give in.”
Alarm beset Hirata. He didn’t think the chieftain was a murderer; Awetok must have simply reached the limits of his endurance. But Hirata’s confidence wavered in spite of himself. Maybe the chieftain was guilty. Maybe Awetok had been deceiving Hirata, luring him with promises of knowledge, to win an ally.
“At last you’ve come to your senses,” Lord Matsumae said with relief. “Let us hear the truth.”
The chieftain spoke. Gizaemon’s expression turned foul. “The bastard says he’ll talk only under one condition. That we call off the war.”
Awetok was sacrificing himself to protect his people. Hirata admired the man’s nobleness even as he continued to wonder if Awetok was the killer. Hirata knew two things for sure: The chieftain had held out this long to increase the value of his confession and use it as leverage to save the Ainu, and he would be executed whether he deserved it or not.
“You’re in no position to bargain,” Lord Matsumae said. “Talk now, and we’ll make a deal later.”
As Gizaemon relayed these words to him, Awetok nodded in resignation. He uttered a statement that sounded final.
“He admits that he killed Tekare,” Gizaemon said with a smug look at Sano.
Sano’s mouth curled with disgust. “This is as false a confession as I’ve ever seen.”
Lord Matsumae ignored Sano, exulting, “At last I know who the culprit is. At last I will have justice for my Tekare.” He beckoned Okimoto. “Take him to the execution ground.”
Urahenka began yelling. The chieftain rapped out a command at him, but he yelled louder.
“What’s he saying?” Sano asked.
“That the chieftain didn’t kill Tekare,” Gizaemon said, annoyed by the interruption. “He says the chieftain only confessed to protect him. He’s the killer, and he wants to prove it to us, with his own confession.”
Lady Matsumae sputtered in fury. “The nerve of you! Have you no manners? You act like a cheap peasant girl.”
“Save your insults,” Reiko said. “They don’t hurt me. Nothing can, after what’s happened.”
“What are you blabbering about now?” Lady Matsumae wiped her face with a wet hand and spat water into the tub in which she sat.
“My son is dead.” Grief swelled within Reiko; her voice trembled. “He has been since before I got here.”
Lady Matsumae’s gaze was stupid with confusion. “How do you know?”
“I went to the keep. I saw the cage where they put Masahiro.” The terrible memory almost undid Reiko. “I saw his blood.”
“How did you get inside the keep?” Lady Matsumae said, as if that was the most important thing about what Reiko had said.
“That doesn’t matter.” Reiko didn’t want to reveal that Wente had helped her; Lady Matsumae would punish Wente. “What matters is that your husband murdered my son. And I think it’s your fault as much as his.”
My fault? How could it be? I never even saw your son. I didn’t know he was here until you told me. If he’s dead, I had nothing to do with it.“
Reiko didn’t believe her. “You started this whole disaster. You murdered Tekare. It drove your husband mad. You’re directly responsible for all his crimes.”
“I didn’t murder her,” Lady Matsumae said, impatient and offended. “I’ve already told you. I wouldn’t lift a finger to kill one of those barbarian whores.” Her tone was one she might use to say that stepping on ants was beneath her. “They’re not worth the trouble.”
“This one was, because you believe she murdered your daughter.”
Dismay sagged Lady Matsumae’s features. She clutched at her heart as if Reiko had struck her there. “Where did you learn that?”
“From Lilac. She told me how your daughter got sick and how Tekare performed a healing ritual. But your daughter died. And you think Tekare poisoned her.”
“Lilac was a terrible gossip,” Lady Matsumae said with disgust, but she didn’t deny Reiko’s claim. “I always said that her tongue would be the death of her.”
“Maybe it was. Yesterday she promised me information about Tekare’s murder. She’d already let me know that you wanted Tekare dead and why. What else did she have to tell?”