Laura Rowland - The Perfumed Sleeve

She picked up a cloth and wiped the rouge and white powder from her face and mouth. Her teeth, dyed gleaming black in the fashionable custom for married women, betrayed her rank. Reiko scrubbed them with a brush until they faded to a drab gray. She hoped no one would notice her shaved eyebrows-another mark of class and fashion. She unpinned her shiny, black waist-length hair, then opened a charcoal brazier and scooped out a handful of ash, which she worked into her hair until it was streaked a dull, sooty gray. Then she pinned her hair into a simple knot and smiled at her reflection. The gray streaks dimmed her natural beauty and aged her twenty years. Satisfaction with her disguise almost eclipsed her fear of leaving safe territory.

Reiko strapped the dagger to her thigh under her skirts, put on the cloak, and repacked her bundle, which she carried as she left the room. She hunched down the passage, imitating an old woman. When she turned a corner, she saw her father walking toward her, clad in his black judicial robes. Alarm jolted Reiko. She’d hoped not to see him because she didn’t want him to know what she was doing. But she couldn’t avoid him-he’d seen her. Reiko cringed as he approached…

… and passed her without a second glance. He hadn’t recognized her! He’d thought she was one of his maids. Reiko suppressed a giggle of delight that her disguise had passed the first test, then hastened from the mansion.

In the street she spied two peasant men carrying an empty kago-a basketlike chair for hire. She waved them down, climbed into the kago, and told them to take her to Edo Castle. As they trotted her past the walled estates, she felt vulnerable without her usual attendants. She shivered in the cold wind, missing the enclosed security of her palanquin. Mounted samurai towered over her. Stripped of the trappings of rank, she attracted little notice from the men, but invisibility was a mixed blessing. If one of Edo ’s many thieves or marauders should attack her, no one would come to her aid. Now Reiko’s doubts returned in full force. She had the strange, disturbing sense that she’d lost her talents as well as her identity. How would she ever learn anything useful about Senior Elder Makino’s wife or concubine? How would she protect herself, even with the dagger she carried?

Reiko fought the insidious panic that waited to ensnare her. She prayed that a bad spell wouldn’t overtake her now, as the kago bore her onto the promenade outside Edo Castle. Its walls, towers, and roofs, looming on the hill above her, no longer represented home or safety. Instead, the castle proclaimed the might of the Tokugawa regime and signaled danger to outsiders-such as herself. Now the kago men stopped near the gate.

“Get out!” they ordered her. “Pay up!”

She reluctantly climbed out of the chair amid the soldiers and officials who thronged the promenade. As she paid the kago men, she saw a florid, thickset samurai standing outside the castle gate, scanning the crowds. Reiko recognized him as Nomura, a palace guard captain and the friend whom Sano had asked to meet her here and get her inside Senior Elder Makino’s estate. He saw her and approached.

“Are you Emi?” he said, calling her by the alias that Sano had given her.

“Yes, honorable master.”

Reiko bowed, noting that he didn’t recognize her, although he’d seen her when she’d accompanied the palace ladies on outings and he’d escorted them. Sano had told Nomura that Emi was his cast-off mistress who needed work. Nomura owed Sano a favor because Sano had recommended him for a promotion, and he’d willingly agreed to help her, even if he didn’t understand why she must work in Senior Elder Makino’s house. Honor demanded that he fulfill his obligation without asking questions.

“Let’s go, then,” Nomura said.

He walked to the castle gate. Reiko trailed behind him. Sentries let her in the gate because Nomura vouched for her. His authority got her past the guards at the checkpoints along the passages. Reiko’s heart thudded as they walked the familiar streets of the official quarter. Soon they arrived at Senior Elder Makino’s estate. Black mourning drapery sagged from the portals. The mansion looked as ominous as a dungeon.

Nomura said his name and rank to the sentries in the guard booth. “I want to see the estate manager,” he told them.

They sent word inside, and presently a samurai appeared. He bore a strong resemblance to Nomura. “Greetings, Honorable Cousin,” he said. “What brings you here?”

“I’m seeking employment for this woman.” Nomura indicated Reiko. “Her name is Emi. I want you to hire her as a ladies’ maid.”

“Very well,” the estate manager said, automatically granting the favor that his high-ranking cousin asked. “Come with me,” he ordered Reiko.

She followed him through the gate. The guards closed it behind them. An awful sense of imprisonment undermined Reiko’s triumph at gaining entry to the estate. She recalled visits she’d made to friends at similar places, when she’d been shown every courtesy due the wife of the shogun’s sōsakan-sama. But now the estate manager led her around the mansion to the servants’ quarters, a plain, two-story wooden building. Here he turned her over to the housekeeper, whom he introduced as Yasue. She was an old woman with white hair, sallow skin, and a hunched back. She carried a thick, blunt stick under the sash of her gray kimono.

“This is Emi, a new maid I’ve just hired for the ladies,” he said to Yasue. “Put her to work.”

He departed, and Reiko felt as though she’d lost her last link with her ordinary world. She knew she wasn’t alone, because Sano had stationed two detectives inside the estate in case she needed help, but she had no idea where they were. She belatedly realized how little she knew about the lives of maids. The recollection that not all employers treated their servants as well as she and Sano did increased her terror.

“Don’t look so frightened,” Yasue said. Amusement glittered in her sharp eyes, which had yellowish whites. Her mouth, filled with large, protruding yellow teeth, grinned at Reiko. “I won’t bite you.”

She took Reiko to a cold, dank room in the servants’ quarters. On the bare earth floor lay rows of wooden pallets topped by straw-filled mattresses. Yasue opened a cupboard and said, “Leave your things here.”

Reiko stowed her bundle and cloak in one of many compartments that held clothes and other personal items belonging to the maids. She smelled the pungent reek of urine and feces from privies outside. The thought of sleeping in such crowded, squalid conditions made her physically ill.

Yasue led her through various buildings, named their functions, and laid out the household rules: “Maids should be as invisible and quiet as possible. Don’t go near Senior Elder Makino’s family, retainers, or guests unless you’re ordered to serve them. Don’t speak to them unless they speak to you.”

There went her hope of initiating conversations with the suspects and attempting to establish their guilt or innocence, Reiko thought. She and Yasue followed a path to a garden of rocks, white sand, and shrubs. In it stood a half-timbered building with wooden shutters and a broad veranda.

“Those are the private chambers,” Yasue said.

As Reiko gazed with interest at the scene of the murder, a woman glided across a covered walkway toward the building. Slim, elegant, and in her forties, she fit Sano’s description of Agemaki, widow of Senior Elder Makino. Then came a young, pretty girl accompanied by a strikingly handsome young man. Reiko surmised that they must be the concubine Okitsu and the actor Koheiji. She craned her neck, avid for a closer look at the murder suspects she’d come to observe. But they quickly disappeared into the private chambers.